Day 1: Stunning!

The creation of the GP “edge” style of competition was certainly a joint work – with structural input from Martin Grunnert and Sven Olivier (thanks team!) without which it would have been a non-starter. (If you want to know more, see the Rules and the Outline). Also, thanks are due to the participants, of which 100% gave up another Thursday evening to iron out the rule-wrinkles and ensure they understood the format & requirements – thanks, guys, the commitment is unprecedented – especially given the distance some had to travel to be there. So we arrived at Worcester of Saturday 17th Feb 2007 with a very clear idea of what we wanted to achieve.



The day dawned with a near-perfect forecast, SW on the Porterville ridge and good instability - the only forecast blemishes being late in the day which is a time of day that Blade Runners are back in the bar! The fact that the forecast was somewhat optimistic was not a problem in the end because all the Blade Runners have run the Gauntlet, and have the grit to overcome “trench warfare” weather (as Adriaan K17 Hepburn puts it, referring to situation where the ridges are not sufficiently buoyant and the pilots have to grovel in the valleys).

All five of the tops pilots participating struggled to reach the remote start viewpoint at Dasklip, and only Sven EY Olivier did not make it before the start after an epic grovel at Apiesklip, and Cornelius 07 von der Heyden needed a relight. But where there is a will there’s a way, and we had “will” in buckets!


Alan X32 O’Regan and Jacobus “Eagle Eye” Hartmann had offered to be at the Dasklip viewpoint to capture the event, thanks Jacobus for all the “in your face” still shots – but we might still need a professional videographer (Alan is fortunately keeping his day-job!).

After some investigation at Dasklip, the field was re-briefed on a “B” task from Dasklip South to 65km from Worcester, back North to 140km out and a finish again at the viewpoint at Dasklip. There was some confusion during this rebrief which cause K17 to misunderstand the first turnpoint, and we’ll brief a B task on the ground in future.

With only minutes to go to the start the gliders were high in the start sector, with only K17 remaining at start height, and this strategy certainly allowed him to calculate the start most accurately as he was able to run the ridge to the start – with Peter ID Farrell and 07 hot on his heals. Reinhold S8 Lawrenz with Gerhard Waller as P2 brought up the rear. Unfortunately Adriaan did a 180 an headed north which eventually left him starting some 3 minutes behind the field.

Around the first turn it was clear that the field had bunched and by the time they were running into Dasklip again Cornelius had claimed the lead and the “Rocky Horror” (drag) point for being first back to the viewpoint – but still with ID and S8 hot on his heals. They could be heard all the way to Renosterhoek jostling for position, and by Renosterhoek S8 was slightly ahead – but unfortunately ran further than 140km giving a clear 2km lead to Cornelius.



In trying to recover this gap S8 ran south a little faster than the conditions allowed and got really low about 15 km north of Dasklip.

So, Cornelius 07 von der Heyden romped home first , with ID in second place and K17 in third. Thankfully, S8 managed the low save (and learned a rather valuable lesson), so despite some further low spots by EY, ID and 07 on the way to Worcester, everyone returned to Worcester.

You know a great day when the bar is full and buzzing to the point you can’t make yourself heard. The Blade Runners have arrived!

Thanks to Nina Grunnert and Alison Navarro for an excellent launch operation, Adriaan K17 Hepburn for all the camera equipment – the pictures, courtesy of GraphicHeartmann, you see in this post and will elsewhere, soon. Jacobus – you rock!