I once looked at the makeup of foreign teams at the WGC. Several European teams had one young pilot in his late 30's or 40's and one older experienced pilot in their late 50's or early 60's competing in each class. In other words, the older pilot was the experienced mentor who had attempted a previous worlds and the younger pilot (who in some cases had won a Junior worlds I believe) had no previous experience competing at (adult) WGC. While I agree that age isn't as important, I would respectfully ask some of our more experienced competition pilots at what age they felt they were at their best and had the most fire in them (sometimes read courage to take certain risks) to win. Fwiw, I'm not necessarily asking when they knew the most or felt they had the most overall experience. In any case, I venture to say the answer is that it was somewhere in their 40's or early 50's, with 10-12 years of competitive gliding experience (or world record attempts) under their belts. I invite former and current team members to provide us their perspective on this. This subject has always fascinated me.

- Chris Schrader