Leeching may have been around since the beginning of soaring. I haven't been but I was around when people started complaining loudly about it in the 70s. I think it got to be especially bad because of three things:

1. The Byars & Holbrook Soaring Symposia and books/articles by Moffat and Reichmann had made flying fast comprehensible to the average pilot. The mystery was gone. The rest of us may not have been able to execute as well as the top pilots but we understood how they were doing it.

2. The composite revolution in sailplanes made essentially identically performing high-performance gliders widely available to a larger number of pilots. When you had to own a Sisu to have a reasonable chance of winning, that was difficult: there were less than a dozen and they cost a small fortune. And you had to know how to tune and fettle with one to extract the most performance. But the Libelle 301 and the first generation of Standard Class gliders such as the Standard Cirrus, ASW 15, and Libelle 201 made it far easier for the average pilot to stay with the top ones.

3. At the time, national contests often filled up. So it was important to be ranked high enough to gain entry. The straightforward way was Category 1 status; i.e., top ten in one of the three previous nationals. That's a joke now when entire national fields can be less than 10 but it was a big deal then. And the easiest (maybe the only) way for good but not-quite-the-best pilots to make it into the top ten was by leeching Karl Striedieck, George Moffat, Ben Greene, or one of the handful of guys you knew were going to win.

It stayed that way for a long time. I still recall the swings of emotion I had when KS rolled in with me out on course in the early 90s. "Wow, Karl is using my thermal!" And then, "Watch out! There are ten other guys following him who don't even see me."

Leeching and big gaggles are not quite the same thing. Leeching means following another pilot mindlessly, even when they get lost. Gaggling can mean using markers ahead to find thermals, flying with other good pilots who share the work of leading out and spreading out to find the best life, or--leeching.

The only contest of any size I've flown recently was Nephi in 2016 where we had three classes--and that also filled up. I don't recall leeching or gaggling being as much of a problem then. I have read and listened to accounts about recent world championships, however, that indicate both are problems there, not just for scoring but for safety. So, yeah, it would be good to find a way to reduce their popularity--without adding a lot of complication and, frankly, making competitive soaring even less attractive to the average pilot than it is now. Because let's be honest: there are very few contests in the U.S. where more competitors wouldn't be welcomed eagerly by the organizers and many competitors as long as they are safe.

Chip Bearden
JB