At 16:11 07 November 2017, Steve Koerner wrote:
Excellent report RO! Most informative piece I've ever read on RAS.


One thing that your report shows is that during the early years
of objective team selection, there was not a problem that could
be tied to rotating in too many new people as consequence of
objective standards.


Funny Rieti story. During the opening parade, the announcer hardly
recognized any of the USA team's names, so he introduced us as
the "much overhauled Team USA", and everyone was snickering.
They didn't snicker anymore after the first competition day though.
DJ and I won the day in 15m and Std. The other team members
placed right up there with us. There was lots of shouting on the
German's part due to the fact that we had procured the "coaching"
services of German champion Walter Neubert (who had great
individual success in Rieti). When asked why he wasn't coaching the
German team, Walter replied that nobody had thought to ask him.
The Germans were labeling Walter as a traitor, and he just laughed
it off. What a real gentleman. We had T-shirts made that had Team
USA on the fronts, and "much overhauled" across the backs in order
tweak the people and announcer who had been snickering during
the opening ceremonies.

DJ flew an absolutely unconscious contest as a lone eagle. His lead
kept growing as the organizers kept setting harder and harder tasks
with what looked like (to us anyway) the intent to get DJ to land out
and even up the scores. Except, DJ kept finishing while everyone
else landed out. Going into the end of the contest, DJ had close to
a full day's 1000 point lead, and it seemed like the organizers finally
gave up on trying to get him to land out. He succeeded in
absolutely blowing the world's best 15m pilots right out of the water
in a very convincing fashion. There was no more snickering at the
closing ceremonies, and I know that several other nation's teams
went home pretty mad about their own poor performances. I know
that the French used their poor performance at Rieti as a stimulus
to build up their team, which has been a juggernaut since Austria in
1989... The German, British and Polish teams seem to have done
the same as well.... The team flying landscape has drastically
changed with all of this too. It makes the typical "lone eagle" type
pilot's (which objective selection methods might tend to produce)
chances of doing well smaller and smaller - as I see it anyway...
As you said, "We're in a pickle."

RO