BTW: In my 18 seasons of gliding I am not aware of the winch cable
ever been cut in an emergency. And that's in about 70'000 launches.

Regards
Marcel

Our club had an instance recently where it was required to cut the cable
but the pilot did some radical flying (75degree nose down in a ventus a
at 700 feet) he let go of the stick and used both hands on the release
and the cable came off.
This ventus had been backreleasing for some time and an "adjustment"
was done but the backrelease angle was now somewhere near the wheel
centre.
One shaken pilot and one big lesson .
One senior pilot of 45 yrs 11000hrs said he had never seen a hangup
in all his flying.