Daniel Vélez () writes:

The committee decided on a fifty three km task on the best looking day so far. I took a late start (the third one) side by side with Mike Glennon, the leading pilot on the score board. But soon after we went for the valley, a big shadow made me drop all the way to the valley floor leaving me struggling at 150 mts above the ground while Mike and his gaggle were slowly climbing above my head.

After that low save my only goal was to make it around the task with no more scary situations, but soon I was again racing and leaving some pilots behind. I caught up with Mike 20 km before goal. We flew wing to wing to the last turnpoint that was fourteen kms away from goal. We were getting to cloud base at 950 mts above ground when I decided to go for it, as Mike was facing away from goal while we were in a thermal.

He went just after me, a few meters behind, but my glide computer was screaming out that we would make it. Fortunately, Alejandro Isaza was just one thermal on front (with an early start so we had already caught him). Then Mike made his move making a turn in a +3m/s core after I just dolphin flew through it, and kept pushing forward to the big thermal that Alejandro was showing us.

Finally, I did a dolphin in it too and got to goal with just enough height to turn for a sweet landing, forty five seconds in front of Mike. There was already another pilot at goal that was four minutes slower than us, but that got all the bonus points for starting early and arriving first, but it was not enough to put him on the first spot. I stole that from him by only two points. Nevertheless, it was not enough to catch up with Mike on the overall scores with three more days to go.

Discuss Columbia at the Oz Report forum
   
 
 
del.icio.us