A good article - for another sport

I just noticed this article in the NY times:

http://travel.nytimes.com/2009/09/18...8hang.html?hpw

When I saw this title I thought, great, an article about soaring. Finally some large scale publicity via a reputable paper. But no, the article is about hang gliding. Now, I have nothing against hang gliding. In fact after a long and tumultuous past of flying hang gliders and paragliders I finally moved over to the dark side and finished my license for sailplanes just a month ago at the age of 53. And I am desperately addicted (I wish I had started this a long time ago). Having now flown the 3 kinds of recreational soaring craft I have reflected a lot on why soaring seems to be fighting rear guard action. I saw this HG’ing article in the NYT as just another symptom of why soaring has been relegated to the most remote crannies of the public mind and why is has a tenacious future propped up largely by older white men (now in that category myself) and an uninspiring national support orgn (SSA). Hang gliding itself suffered a rapid, massive die off when paragliders appeared. I remember the glory days of hang gliding while living near the Alps in the mid 80s. HG’s everywhere, hundreds of them. One day, after about a 5 min briefing, I flew one the first paragliders that a buddy had bought and barely survived a 3 to 1 glide in terrain following mode down a ravine on a steep mountain in Austria - I thought, well this sport obviously has no future. Wrong. Now you go to pretty much any launch site in the Alps and HGs are outnumbered at least 10/1 by bag wings. So it is quite interesting that even though it is itself a sport on drip feed mode HG’ing gets its own article in the NY Times. I can’t remember every having seen an article about soaring in the NYT. One wonders why. This sport needs some serious young energy put into it……