Christophe , Uli and Sebastian, the daily winners as shared by the organizers.AND troubled by penalty points Laurens,[this picture courtesy Jill]

Every day is a day and the winner gets 10 points. 10 Points can make or break a pilot- score. Giorgio had not such a good day and “dropped ” from 1 to 5 overall.So points are very ” expensive ” here.
Laurens was fast ; he get’s the hang of the Italian mountains, won the day ,…..but got penalty points for a too high start altitude and a too low finish altitude, so no 10 but 5 points for him. At least POINTS!!!!

Tom had his own way of saying what he found of this day :
“Not such a good day today, only 150km.
I got an OK start, a little low, late and slow but on the correct side of the line for the first hill.
The first few turnpoints were very close with weak, low conditions and thermalling up the sides of the hills in 2kts max. Once back near Varese we got a 5kt climb (almost the best climb I have seen), to a nosebleeding 1500 metres (start altitude). I was with Christophe Ruch at this stage, who eventually won the day. Typical of this comp I didn’t go with him over the flat country as I could see a bunch ahead quite low, I took the scenic mountain track with Didier.
Had a pretty good run but the flatlanders did better. Around the last turn I could see more than 10 ahead and above so dumped most of my water and took a long climb for a conservative final glide home.
Gee points are hard to get here.”

Yesterday Tom did SO well he was on his way to be with the best 3, but then,
” Tom was now on the most the direct route, deep in the valley, but Tilo managed to find the best thermal of the day in the foothills near the train station just South of Como, allowing him to lead the group home on what was sure to be a very exciting final glide for the lead pilots.
Tom found himself a few meters low on the glide and approaching the ridge line at Varese town decided he did not have the altitude to cross it safely and made a very good decision to land in a field before he had no options available.” as shared by the SGP journalist.

A WOW -factor picture shared by today’s winner Christophe who raced with Laurens to the finish line.

Thursday September 10 race 5;

208 km. is on the organizers schedule today as an A task and the B task will be 162 km., so also for the 20 pilots.All depending on the weather.

The south of Italy had appalling weather yesterday with flooding, but Varese is up North and they could fly .
“Today is dawning a little grey in Varese but the airfield is beginning to come alive for SGP Final day 6 – Race 5.”

Race 5 started at 14.30 and had in the evening  3 worthy winners !
The first 6 finishing pilots arrived with a speed of 123 km./h.

Max, the race 5 winner, said that he was during the day not in the lead ,but he was in the end and raced to the finish, winning from aces as Sebastian and Christophe [R] .
Christophe had a great final glide as well  and passed Werner and Sebastian, but,..Max was too far ahead.
Werner was more than happy with his 3d place .
“Race 5 was about as close as it gets for a 200km circuit. The first eight gliders finished within 45 seconds of one another and the winners speed was 123kph. There was one ‘outlanding’ Tilo Holighaus who was forced to use his Front Electric Sustainer (FES).”

   

Another series of great pictures by Fabio from todays winners!!!!

Today’s podium as see and shared by the Aussies.

Tom was happy with his point and finished in style.

Sebastian stirred up our soaring-world a bit by mentioning in an interview about the  wingloading from participating gliders. It’s good he brings this in the open and many will talk about it and this discussion is not over yet.
He confirmed what he then said in writing;

” I think it is obvious now that equal wing loading is not fair in GP. Gliders have been designed with a different philosophy, to fulfill equal weight, 600kg limit. Some designers choose to have bigger lift coefficient others choose bigger wing area. Now as a result gliders flying equally in world gliding championships have no chance with those who have bigger wing because they had almost not changed weight! ASG had to reduce it by almost 70kgs. You can’t win when they stick to your tail all day, you start final glide 40m higher and come one minute later than they on finish line.

I hope next days we will have weaker, more complicated weather and that this is the last competition with this rule which originally was to force.”

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Told you about the Dutch juniors who packed their 4 gliders in the containers from Corowa together with several other guests for this season.
The UK juniors have done the same now. Also their gliders are on the way down under.Here is what they shared:
“After several weeks of hard work fitting, packing and painting the container the junior teams gliders are now on the way to Australia for the Junior World Gliding Championships. Special thanks to the British Gliding Association and Will Chappel from Apogee Industries for all of their help with getting the container on the way.”

   
The UK juniors have packed their gliders for Narromine.
As shared by British Gliding Team.

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More news on Saturday evening/Sunday morning.
Cheers Ritz