I am a fairly new contest pilot, flying in sport's class in the
northeast.
If I had a competitive glider I might consider standard/15m class.

So take my comments as someone who has never had to do a gate finish
for real, but has considered them, practiced them and does consider
them inherently dangerous.

There is nothing inherently dangerous in a line finish accomplished
by
skillful pilots exercising good judgement.

I consider them to be inherently dangerous because the solution for
the fastest time pushes the pilot towards a very dangerous flying
situation.

Flying at best speed to fly for the last thermal all the way to 50agl
at the finish line. For my Grob102, if I was in a 4 knot thermal
that's 79 knots.
Also it's a 25/1 glide ration so at 1 nm away I am at 290 feet, 2nm at
540 feet. This seems pretty dangerous to me. If I hit sink, then I am
landing wherever the sink hit me, without any chance for picking a
field, flying a pattern, etc. Even if don't hit sink, I am still only
set up to land straight ahead past the finish line.

So most pilots add some safety margin (in the form of extra potential
energy), they take the thermal higher than they should (from a speed
perspective). As they get closer to the finish line, they convert the
potential energy to speed. Then re-convert the speed to height for a
'normal' pattern.

The problem is that you score higher (faster) for a lower safety
margin.

Why not just set the minimum required safety margin for all pilots ?
The required finish altitude is just that, a minimum safety margin for
all contest pilots. The rules are saying "if you reduce the safety
margin less than this, you will not get a better score than this."

And, of course, there's the simplest solution of all. If you have to
race, but don't like finish lines, then finish high. You are allowed
to
do that.

But the rules should not provide a scoring benefit to the pilots who
decide to reduce the safety margin. I don't want to be thinking "hey,
if I really push this final glide I might make up that 20point
advantage my competitor got yesterday."

Todd Smith
3S