WGC 2003 in Leszno instead of Rieti

Hi!

From IGC: On the 24th of April the IGC President Tor Johannessen and Vice President Brian Spreckley met with the organising committee for the 2003 WGC at Rieti. During the meeting serious flaws in the preparations for the 2002 preparatory event became evident. The preparatory event was scheduled for August only three and a half months away.

- There was no functioning Championship director

- no information bulletins had been sent out,

- no invitations had been sent out,

- no web site was established for the event.

- no system for entering the contest had been established

Consequently, NACs had no possibility to enter teams in the event and many are now unable to make arrangements to do so.

It is an IGC requirement that the NAC awarded a WGC shall organise a Preparatory Contest one year ahead of the WGC. This is to prove that the organising staff is proficient and that the participants have the possibility to acquaint themselves with the conditions locally and in the contest area. The contest shall as far as possible be run under the same rules and conditions and at the same time of the year as the main event.

As the local conditions in Rieti due to the mountainous terrain are quite special, the preparatory contest is believed to be of greater importance than in venues with flat terrain. The absence of a preparatory event with the possibility for the competitors to get acquainted in the area significantly affect the chances of the 2003 WGC being a fair contest, competitors unacquainted with the area will suffer a significant disadvantage.

Based on the lack of preparations for the 2002 Preparatory Contest, the IGC Bureau has decided that the venue for the World Gliding Championships in 2003 will be moved to Leszno in Poland instead of Rieti in Italy.

Tor Johannessen IGC President

bye

Why not move it to Ephrata, Washington US? Ephrata actually had done very good preparations for the contest, (at least in the proposal stage).

Even better: Bern, Switzerland. The team there is ready!

Tel P 01 363 62 42, Tel G 01 632 43 60, Fax G 01 632 10 21

There is no point in speculating further as far as the location of the Worlds in 2003 are concerned.

After much agonising, a decision has been made by the IGC Bureau, which is what they are elected for. We should all accept it and get on with making the WGC 2003 in Poland the best event possible.

IGC comes in for quite a bit of flak on this newsgroup, but in this case an awkward 'nettle' has been grasped and a decision made. I applaud their work on this, let us support it and not carp on the sidelines.

Well said Ian. They have decided and it's over.

There's one point I'd like to underline: WHY all this???.

As Italian (even if living in USA) I'm really afraid of the fact that IGC has got to take this decision. The worst is that they have been perfectly right.

The last few months have seen a rise of concern between the Italian gliding community, which was seeing that the event in Rieti was not being programmed as deserved. We have a very big 'political' problem down there, where the main club has been driven down to the ground for reasons of personal power by some individual, and is not given any possibility to rebuild. A new board of really good willing people has been dismissed with pretentious reasons.

The net result is that the whole matter has been handled completely outside the gliding community, which is now facing this loss of credibility for reasons outside its control.

I hope that Aldo Cernezzi, which is very aware of the situation, will post an article explaining the details of the problem. Rieti is a resource for the whole European gliding, and perhaps also outside Europe, and I think that knowing what is going on is important for everybody.

Miriano

Better still Lasham in england. We have a 2000m newly resurfaced runway plus 500 acres of grass. We typically launch a club grid of 50-60 gliders every summer weekend day. We have the organisation, the site, and even the pilots ( two current world champions in the club)

and the wonderful British weather?

Why not? its the same for all the pilots. There is just as much skill in working half knot thermals to creep around a 300k as there is roaring around 600k at 100kph. By the way we have flown numerous 300ks, 5 x 500k and 2 x 750 in the last month and the season has barely started