On Tuesday, February 9, 2016 at 9:48:38 AM UTC-8, John Cochrane wrote:
John C, you're on the USRC! You should have a sensitivity to our complete abandonment of international tasking standards.

FYI I lost the election and am no longer on USRC. Congrats to UH who took my place.

And the point of my post is not to argue for one vs. another task. I just object to emotional labels such as "pure."

ATs under IGC rules are an extremely tactical game, and most of the tactics have little to do with extracting energy from the air. That's not good or bad, pure or impure, it's just a fact. Lots of very successful sports set up races and contests in which tactics are central rather than individual performance. Think of bike racing or sailing.

If you enjoy playing these tactical games, you enjoy ATs. If you want to train for WGC, you definitely want to fly more ATs, and TATs under international devaluation rules.

If you enjoy matching wits with the atmosphere, for a few hours, coming home, having a beer with your buddies, swapping stories and seeing how your efforts and soaring decisions stacked up with theirs, you enjoy time limited tasks at SSA sanctioned contests.

If you enjoy flying totally on your own, from dawn to dusk, then going home and seeing how your efforts compared to your buddies on the computer, then you enjoy OLC

Some enjoy close tactical games, some enjoy soaring-focused competitions. Some like dinghy racing or match racing. Some like open ocean man against weather racing. Some like time trials, some like peleton racing, some like track one on one. No good or bad here. And nobody is "pure."

John Cochrane BB

Perhaps the confusing comes from calling this a race. It is a competition of sorts, but not really what most people think of as a race. More like the gymkhana in motorsports. The Grand Prix format can more properly be called a race.