At 18:02 30 January 2018, jfitch wrote:

On a day when most people can stay high, true. On a day when
only a few make it home, not true. In a contest where that day
determines the winner, a single low save can determine the winner.

The 1958 WGC Open Class was won on a day like that, except that
E.G. Haase (as relayed personally to me) made a string of very
low saves (albeit all over very landable terrain) and was thus able
to tiptoe his way to victory that day. He was then able to defend his
lead until the contest ended. It was a brilliant flight, not luck. Some
pilots are just better at that kind of flying than others. For example,
in Belgium, they have a maximum altitude of 3,000' due to
controlled airspace over the entire country. Those guys fly low a
lot.

The 1985 WGC STD Class was also won that way on a very difficult
day where a lot of us landed out. LB found a small thermal at
around 100 meters, (possibly marked by a team mate?) which
eventually got him high enough to get back home. This gave
him enough of a lead to win the contest. Leo later even wrote an
article about "the thermal that won him the WGC".

I am sure that there are more examples of this.... I am just
personally familiar with these two right off the top of my head.

Contests are most often decided on the difficult days. In general,
the performance on those days separates the best from the rest.
If one just wants to race on the nice days, it seems like an OLC
camp would be the place to go. If you want to pick a national
champion who will have any kind of a shot at being competitive
at a WGC, then one can't eliminate the difficult days.

RO