Final team positions

Posted by Pieter

Saturday we were looking forward to some "jollie patrollie" flying, but yet again the wind had the better of us. In strong wind conditions we all had short flights for old times sake. The rest of the day was spent stripping machines, sterilising and packing up. We were also eagerly awaiting the final team scores.

After being in 5th position for most of the comp we were sad to see that Italy over took us on the very last task.

Final team standings (PF1 - Solo Foot launch): out of 16 Teams

1st - Czech

2nd - Britain

3rd - Poland

4th - Spain

5th - Italy
6th - South Africa

PF2 - Tandem Foot launch (Anton & Mias) - 6th

PL1 - Single Trikes (Riaan & Paul) - 5th out of 8teams

Much was learned by all, and the unanimous feeling is on of "if only". The bottom line is that at this level of competition there is just no margin for any error. As a team we have improved on the 2007 worlds performance from 9th to 6th. The level of experience is constantly improving but we definattely need to have more local competitions if we ever want to be a podium contender in the world arena.

Keeping in mind that SA and Brazil (with only two team members) were the only Southern hemisphere teams, and secondly that most European teams have 10 to 20 times as many pilots in the country than SA, we surprised many other countries.