Engine Out Landing. Big Deal?

At 16:51 25 March 2011, soartech wrote:
I almost snickered a bit after watching this "real life" story about
how a pilot had to land his plane after loosing engine power at 500
feet. After 35 years of flying gliders this looks normal to me. Maybe
power planes are really hard to fly. This guy has 4700 hours and he
overshot his turn onto the runway and lands way left of the center
line.
I think the solution is that every new power pilot should be required
to have 20 flights in gliders before even stepping into a plane with
an engine.
http://flash.aopa.org/asf/pilotstori...turn/index.cfm

As A Commercial Glider Pilot who happens to fly alot of Cessna single
engine stuff the above comment that Mr. Soartech was snickering at one of
our fellow airmans ,less than stellar performance, in a aircraft
Completely different than a glider , in what is a hair raising, scary,
potentially fatal situation,is sad to me.
A 500' engine out is a serious thing. In a glider at 500' you can glide
a couple of miles, easy. At something like a 120 ft/ min sink rate. I would
like to load Mr. Soartech in a C172 full of fuel, and at max climb
attitude,full power, turn off the mags and see how he does. First of all,
if you ball it, up the odds are you are going to turn into a fireball.
Second, by the time you react, with a surprising very large attitude nose
down shove required on the yoke, which you NEVER do in normal flight ops,
the airspeed is going to be low and the ground coming up very fast, oh yea
and you might have some people in there with you, like your kids. Its not
quite like your at 500' at 65 knots in your LS 4 let me tell you. So
lets not be to harsh on our fellow aviators, after all the history books
are full of World Class level Multi Nationals winners/instructors in
gliders that have killed themselves and we continue to do so at a very
steady and consistent pace.
We land short, we forget to lower the gear, we forget to connect the
controls, we forget to turn on the 02, were on the wrong frequency, We
hit our friends in thermals we land in the trees! the list goes on.
Lets be careful out there this season and watch out for each other.