On Friday, February 14, 2014 11:43:02 AM UTC-5, son_of_flubber wrote:

I'm truly ignorant of how risk taking is rewarded in sailplane racing, but the 11% flying mortality rate for world champion glider pilots made an impression. I realize that lower levels of racing involve on average less risk taking.


Someone pointed out to me off-line that my cited percentage is wrong. I apologize for my mistake.

My original source is
http://www.dg-flugzeugbau.de/safety-comes-first-e.html

On rereading the article I see that it notes 3 out of 30 GERMAN world champions died in glider accidents, which would be 10%. Someone later corrected me on RAS that the number of German world champions was 32, and mental error rounded 3/32 to 11% (should be 9%).

And of course there are additional world champions who did not fly for Germany and who did not die in glider accidents. To avoid propagation of additional wrong information, I will not attempt to calculate the correct mortality rate for all world champions.