Jonathon, thats a valid point. Some of us however are engaged in a different type of competition flying involving distance and record flying. For this type of endevor, staying in the air is the paramont concern. In these instances we take the risks necessary to keep going, making distance, many times is super marginal end of the day or very early in the day conditions.

Making educated low saves in these cases are historically frequent and necessary. Given the basics as stated previously of having a field already set up etc, making low saves is a necessary skill thats is seen in every record setter especially when trying to do it in low performance ships.

One side note is, most of the lower performance ships are dang good at landing slow and consequently, can use little pea size patches to set down safely which would make a js1 or other high performance glider pilot cringe
Dan.