Actually Nick, IGC rules don’t promote gaggling anymore than US rules. This is a false narrative being fed to US pilots by a small group that does not wish to see change. Current IGC rules with the greater reward for higher speed encourages more aggressive flying.

The big concern for top pilots is not gaggles on course but leeching at the start to give a leech pilot an advantage of starting a few minutes behind the better pilots. This is easily fixed with the PEV before start.

The biggest issue with gaggles is prestart when there are few thermals and the the top pilots are trying to evade the leeches. Again the PEV will help with this because just following a top pilot around won’t help if only they know when they are going to start and the leech no longer gets an advantage for starting later. It becomes less important to blindly follow an other pilot prestart.

I have only flown twice with significant gaggles on course. 2012 15m US Nationals where we had to dead glide 15 miles to lift and we ended up with one big gaggle on the whole course and 15m WGC 2018 when the IGC tried the 10 minute start interval and we had 38 gliders start Grand Prix style at the same time. It was like a motocross holeshot dive to the first thermal. The first one there got a clean climb and the rest had to fight for space.

The fastest way around a task is with a group of three to four gliders. That is why most top pilots fly in small groups and not alone. More than four and the group can’t climb well. But having two to four increases the odds of finding better lines and climbs. Even in the US Nationals, especially in the East you will see small groups form before start. Western flying requires less of it, but it is still very helpful in Uvalde and Hobbs..

Tim (TT)