WGC Uvalde: US Team... What Happened????

The US team has talented pilots no different than other countries. Our 2012 Worlds team consists great people and great pilots. But their (our) potential is not even close to fully realized for World competition because we play checkers (US rules) and the rest of the world plays poker (FAI).

I have had some more thoughts when thinking about why we in the US are so isolated and, at the same time and unsurprisingly, so far behind the rest of the world in World Level Competition. I don't see any major safety statistical differences that justify the US rules as safer. So let's take safety off the board for a moment and discuss objective changes that glare out.

1) Do to our SSA insistence for a totally different set of US competition rules, we isolate US contest pilots from having any opportunity to race with outsiders in the US. We have therefore become a very closed group. Instead of attracting other top pilots to come fly in the US (many amazing soaring sites), we do the opposite and actually repel foreign pilots. Flying in the US for top level foreign pilots is a waste of time. Why, different rules but that is not all.

In addition, foreign pilots are only allowed to fly in major US contests as guests. Look at 2012 15 meter nationals for example. Kinda weird really. Duck-hawk, duck-hawk...blah blah blah. Great glider but the guy who actually won this event was almost ignored. That's bugs me. I'm sure it bothered some others. In general is this the way to welcome foreign pilots? Don't we won't more pilots, foreign and domestic?

In my opinion, if we worked to better welcome foreign pilots to US events and scored everyone attending major US contest equally, we might just begin to attract some more top pilots to practice with. To learn from. We should simply pick the top American (2nd in this case) as the US champion, but honor all the pilots. No big deal, no problem. We can then gauge ourselves more often, etc. We should really be bending over backwards to have the opportunity to fly against top international pilots. Instead we close it off (treat them as alien contestants). This makes no sense to me.

2) The US pilots only race area tasks (almost exclusively) with massive circles (20, 30 miles). Foreign racing pilots, countries, fly, primarily, assigned tasks under FAI. Assigned tasks are the main task at 15/18/Open world championships and FAI. In my opinion (and that opinion is shared by most if not all of the international pilots I know now) large circles are major obstacles to becoming competitive in international competition. No need for any strategy in large radius area tasks. It's more like flying for OLC points then racing. Just follow clouds and if you are lucky enough, you win. Foreign pilots simply don't like our tasking. Especially the top ones.. It stunts our talented pilots growth. It repels other international talent. It's boring.

I know a number of foreign pilots now who, if the US ran the same rules and tasking, would have come to the US to train early this summer. But, they didn't because it was of little value to them (checkers).

If I recall correctly, no US nationals had a single assigned task this year (2012). For certain, the vast majority of US tasks were large area task.. With that (checkers vs. poker) how can a US pilot (15/18/Open) possibly expect success in the European game? You know, that other sport...FAI? Those rules they use internationally and at Worlds? Area tasks with huge circles 20-30 miles again is no different than OLC. Hell, cylinders of that size would*cover 1/5th of some European countries!

If we don't fly task similar to what our Worlds pilots will fly at the World Championship, team flying practice will not help them. In addition, US team selection is strongly influenced by large area task results. Then, after qualification and training under US rules, they are asked to suddenly metamorphosis into FAI champions for a few weeks during the World Championship? Then they don't do well, at all, even at their home venue of Uvalde we are shocked? They had no chance. It was actually their first time (most of them) experiencing an entirely different sport. FAI soaring rules racing! I wish it was possible to have it all. Noir own "safer rules" and world champions. But the fact is that this sport is really hard and the big boys are really, really good! They, along with the rest of the world, fly FAI. It is nearly impossible for our pilots overcome the disadvantage they endure via disregarding FAI entirely in favor of our own, special SSA rules.

It all revolves around our philosophy on rules here in the USA. They may be great for "some"...but we are never going to be competitive at a World championship unless a pilot is extraordinary and lucky squared. I contend that we should never have expect to be competitive in Uvalde. Good results were upside at best.

Everything we do here in the USA is wrong if World Championships (or even being remotely competitive) is our goal. Period. And as some have mentioned, it SIMPLY IS NOT AN SSA GOAL.

I contend we scrap our SSA rules and adopt FAI next year. At some level. Give pilots the choice. We can save the vast time spent on recreating the sport for ourselves via our special rules committee and focus on more important items. Again, safety is not measurably different in the US and Europe.. Why do we have an entirely different set of rules again?