As anyone who has read the Oz Report should understand I am in favor of both these formats, open distance and Race to Goal. I love flying open distance at Zapata where you can really fly open distance. You'll also remember that we (the task committee, including yours truly) called and flew the longest task every flown in a competition, 215 miles. So I am very much in favor open distance and long distance tasks.

I have been flying competitions since 1989. One of the first competitions I flew (and later ran) was the Chelan Cross Country Classic. When I started the Classic was purely open distance. Well, it turned out that we wore out the winner (Kevin) and his driver (April). Every day they would go over 100 miles.

After two years of this, and Kevin never coming back again to fly the Classic (and may have quit hang gliding altogether), we went to providing bonus multipliers for designated turnpoint triangles, out and returns, and landing at designated LZ, back at the Butte. This turned out to be very popular. Pilots get to choose their own tasks, but the turnpoints were taken from a list of a good number of them.

Now, we learned something here. It was just as valid to have a competition that used turnpoints and brought pilots back to the start so that they wouldn't have to spend as much time in the truck driving back. What exactly does driving have to do with hang gliding?

Later I was able to win the Chelan Cross Country Classic twice. One year I far outpaced any other competitor (probably ever) by flying a good sized triangle, coming back to the Butte, then heading out on a straight line task (as was permitted) and flying an additional 75 miles. This gave me an insurmountable lead and still allowed me to get back to Chelan in time for dinner.

I suggest that we learn from the past and realize that open distance and a continuous week of competition are not compatible formats.