PWC Loma Bola: Task 1

my First World Cup

I qualified for my first World Cup this year with the letters I earned from the season in Europe and made my debut flight in today’s first task at PWC in Loma Bola, Argentina.

Flying in a World Cup has been my goal for several years now and something I’ve been working very hard at. I used every day off and chance I have had to train for comps, whether that’s alone, with friends or at other competitions, it’s been my main focus.

To finally be here in my first PWC is a great feeling and the energy of all the pilots at a World Cup brings that extra edge of excitement and pressure to perform well.

Today’s task (task 1) is what some would say is a short task with only 57km to fly. As the weather has been very wet and the forecast didn’t look great yesterday we were expecting the possibility of a cancelled day but the clouds cleared (on most of the course) and we had our first task.

Flying 57km in Loma Bola is not the easiest 57km you will do and to do it in a comp and hold off the urge to push too hard takes a lot of restraint. The flying here (as everyone had warned me) is technical, with slow climbs and requires a lot of patience.

On today’s course I started high above the gaggle and got myself into a great position for the start. I managed to maintain my altitude and position with the lead gaggle for 80% of the race. I made a few risky moves at several points in the course and to my advantage they payed off, putting me in an even better position and for a moment in 1st. I took one bad line when out in front and had to rejoin the lead gaggle but managed to stay with the top 10. 

It wasn’t until the final 12km to the ESS, that today was out in the valley, myself and some other pilots decided to push out to the sunny valley and away from the grey cloud covered ridge. I had the goal in my sites but found myself caught in a lot of wind. As I climbed slowly out of the wind to ensure I would make goal I watched 50% of the other pilots fly along the ridge and then cross to the ESS from there. 

One small decision changed the entire outcome of the race for me and I made goal 64th today. Fortunately my leading points from earlier pushed me up to 48th overall for the task.

I’ve been noticing how one bad decision can spiral into lots of bad decisions and have been trying to improve on correcting those bad decisions and not letting it escalate into something else. I hope with more time flying amongst all the other great pilots here this week I can learn something from them on how to do this.

I’m hoping tomorrow I will be able to make that final push like I had wanted to today and come into goal in a higher position.

I guess now I’ve made it to my first PWC my next goals are to win a task and fly in a super final, not to mention winning a PWC too. Looks like I’ve got a lot more training days ahead of me but I’m looking forward to it.

I also want to give a big shout out and thank you to Michael Sigel who kindly lent me his SM Boomerang 11 for the race. Maybe it has some of his good racing energy left in it or the SM is just the best glider to fly in a comp but it feels great in the air and glides better than the S and M Boomerang 11s that I’ve been flying at other comps. Thank you Michael and Gin!