Fortunately though all that practice came in really handy on day one, which was spent entirely, exclusively and uninterruptedly... watching the rain; and no one was better at it than me!
We met at the Wrecker car park on day two where we were sat on top of the low cloud, something I've not seen in the twenty odd years I've been watching low cloud at the Bwlch. Have a look at the photos.
The day's flying was typical back of the Wrecker; bloody horrible. Very thermic, bumpy and very difficult to get any sort of rhythm.
Lots of people flew really well, various people had bits of good air, some people showed they need a bit or practice (me!) and finally the results panned out as shown below.
Condolences to those who flew well but got nothing for their efforts.
Personally I think we need to look again at the World Champs qualifying process. Like never before the skills required to be competitive will be very slope specific and that slope will be nothing like the back of the Wrecker in thermic conditions. Also the concept of running a qualifier that includes people who have no interest in attending is just weird!
Some photos and the results are below.
| 1 | Simon Thornton | 6541.57 |
| 2 | Mark Redsell | 6502.31 |
| 3 | Kevin Newton | 6479.83 |
| 4 | Martin Newnham | 6334.7 |
| 5 | Peter Gunning | 6292.7 |
| 6 | Joel West | 6284.91 |
| 7 | Adam Richardson | 6223.19 |
| 8 | Mike Evans | 6164.88 |
| 9 | Greg Dakin | 6152.25 |
| 10 | Keith Woods | 6111.02 |
| 11 | Clayton Landells | 6017.09 |
| 12 | Frank Hulton | 5939.95 |
| 13 | Andrzej Tabero | 5873.03 |
| 14 | Rich Bago | 5809.14 |
| 15 | Mick Walsh | 5802.42 |
| 16 | Paul Middleton | 5770.05 |
| 17 | Scott Ravenscroft | 5744.77 |
| 18 | Mark Abbotts | 5720.39 |
| 19 | Dave Rumble | 5717.33 |
| 20 | Jon Edison | 5491.28 |
| 21 | Ian Mason | 5386.61 |
| 22 | Paul Upton | 5383.18 |
| 23 | Tom Foreman | 5319.04 |
| 24 | Paul Stubly | 5264.55 |
| 25 | Tony Robertson | 5198.63 |
| 26 | Peter Burgess | 5176.49 |
| 27 | Jason Bioletti | 4964.13 |
| 28 | Mark Treble | 4800.78 |
| 29 | John Treble | 4782.38 |
