So ends another Gulgong Classic. The elite field from last year were nowhere to be seen which made for quite a different comp compared to any I had been to in the past. The atmosphere was casual with no crap about scoring systems or the like. This week was geared towards the average pilots and making us fly better.
Scott Barrett is incredible in this respect. He seems to draw more enjoyment from teaching others to fly further and faster than he does from his individual success. Winning the comp was merely a formality for Scott, instead he invested more of his energy in watching other pilots styles and decisions and providing feed back to us on what we did well and what we might be able to try when placed in a similar situation next time.
Scott will be running an informal comp clinic at the Corryong Cup in January. Any pilots, especially if you’re in a floater, that wants to learn how to improve their XC skills should get down to this comp for what will be a very fun and educational week.
So back to Gulgong, rather than running you through each task you are best to look at Davis’s accounts:
With Scott and Cam having cemented in first and second places the battle moved down to 3rd place with three of us in the running. Davis, Armando (an awesome guy from Canada) and myself. Only 20 points separated 3rd from 5th - this was going to be fun.
Wow, I had never imagined being in such a position. Normally as we come into the last day at a comp I have my eye on twenty something’th place with nothing on the line. This was a chance at a podium finish some different tactics were required - but what?
Once again, Scott had his thinking cap on and elected to fly the task with me knowing that he already had first place in the bag. Which ever way the day was to pan out from here I knew that it would be a great experience to draw on in future.
After Davis hit the deck early it was between Armando and I. We both made goal in good time. I had my suspicions that Armando would have completed the course faster than I, but he had taken a later start gate which meant that I stole most of the arrival points. We would have to wait for the GPS downloads to see who snagged third place.
After a tense, but jovial wait, in which Armand and I managed to consume a few beers and congratulate each other on taking bronze (neither of us thought we had it), the scores were calculated. 4 points in it. One extra turn after a week of flying. How close can you get? It was me on top this time, so naturally I was stoked, but more than that I am looking forward to the rematch at Forbes. Hopefully Armando finds time in his schedule to get down to Canberra for a spot of flying before then.
So ended another week of fun, comradery and learning. The lessons from Gulgong this year were many and varied so I’ll try and get some of them down on here before too long.
Final scores can be found here
Incidentally, Davis put Cam on to using Seeyou and Soaringspot.com to score the comp. This an excellent method of scoring comps and publicising the results. I hope that it is adopted by all comps in the future.
