Make Sailplane Racing Great Again

Greg. Interesting article and most likely not the only one. It is a good model to follow. Thanks for pointing it out.

Sailplane racing and recreational flying is dying as we know it. To date, other attempts to revive it have had minimal success so what is the harm of trying a different avenue? What is the fear? It might succeed despite traditionalist's best efforts at keeping the sports comfortable for traditionalists. If this was the case think about TP cameras and how GPS allowed the sport to evolve. Without people willing to challenge the establishment sports stagnate and die.

Motorheads who have traditionally hopped up cars from the 50-70's didn't take motorheads who swap chips seriously. Look at the success of drifting. According to some, modern hot rodding isn't legit. Enough people have an interest in getting extra power from an engine and smoking tires that drifting is a multi million dollar sport. How many modern cars sport carbon muffler cans and aftermarket rear deck wings?

Using the E platform to bring any aviation into the public eye is great. We might not have great contests for a few years but we might.

Making contests great again might also be making the organizer's job more fun. I have worked the gate (I remember them fondly),retrieve desk, and as an official for an international contest and have real world experience with what a thankless job it is. I've also been crew which is a ton of work.

Maybe we, pilots, make contests fun for those who run them and they will work to make it fun for the pilots. Contest pilots might be going about this backwards. Make contests fun for everyone. This has been mentioned in prior replies and I wholeheartedly agree. Why not have trailer backing contests and some sort of fun glider related tasks for crew members? Pilot was DFL for the contest but the crew took home the trophy. Stuff for them to do at the airport besides wait around for a phone to ring. Those days were good for the team but kinda sucked as crew. Retrieves were always an adventure and I remember many more good retrieve stories then flight stories.

When flying contests, I always flew better when the rest of my team was having a good time.

Contests with a great reputation had something special about them. Good feeds; interesting destinations; stuff for crews to do when the flying was going on; stuff to do when the wx was garbage and it was a no fly day. The Seniors take a day off so the pilots can dote on the crew. Great idea.

The flying part of contests is driven by the weather which is out of our control. What can we control to make a contest great?