Train Wreck

On Friday, November 3, 2017 at 7:58:43 PM UTC+3, John Cochrane wrote:
The modal pilot went to the worlds once, and treated it as a subsidized gliding vacation. We prized "fair" and "objective" above "successful." We could go back to that... and to the predictable results. The US team committee, bless them, wants to win on occasion, not just be "objective" about who gets selected.

I officiated at the worlds once. I was ... surprised ... at how unprepared some of the pilots were.

- one guy broke up his glider in flight on a practice day, parts raining out of a cloud past other pilots.
- one guy scratched lower and lower and lower over a perfectly good ranch airfield, and then cartwheeled and broke his glider.
- one guy started the first task, scored 0.0 km for the day, and withdrew from the contest, saying he wasn't prepared to fly in mountains. (He didn't know the contest would be in NZ?)
- one guy persistently got warnings for things such as landing downwind, against other landing traffic.