A 450k racing task was given and this was “a short task due to international evening”. My teammate and I left at 1330, a bit later than I had suggested, but I trust his judgement. We ripped through the first half of the course at a speed of 120kph. Going into the 3rd turn I encountered a bunch of sink and darted off into the blue to nab the turnpoint and move on. Once I got the turnpoint, I got down to 1300ft agl. Mark somehow evaded the sink, licked the point and moved right on. I scratched a bit and got back up with a new speed of 110kph. Back up at cloudbase, going into the 4th turn I get a message saying that the day was canceled for both classes. “Return to airport immediately”. My first thought when hearing this message was that this was somehow an old message from a few days ago and I was just now getting it. Then I get a call from Tom telling me the day was scrubbed and for me to come home. Now I began to worry. What happened? Is everyone okay? Who even is involved? None of these questions really mattered at the time. I was 130k from home and the day was ending. Fortunately, it was a booming day so I simply turned right around and took the same
energy line that I had just been on and made progress home. I would later find out that there was a midair involving one standard class glider and one club class glider. The club pilot bailed out while the standard pilot landed in a field safely with his teammate not too far behind him. Everyone was okay but they still decided to cancel the international evening celebration. So the rest of the night I shared a few beers with some of the other pilots and crew. The evening started quite somber, for obvious reasons no one was chipper. As the night went on, we all came to the understanding that as unfortunate as the middair was, these things do happen in this sport and everyone made it home safely. We are competing at the highest level and we are all pushing hard. It’s a risk we accept everytime we strap into the glider. Overall the day ended up being a 6.5 hr practice day with the anticipation of resuming competition tomorrow.

-David McMaster

You can find the latest contest scores at:
https://www.soaringspot.com/en_gb/junior-world-gliding-championships-2022-tabor-2022/results

For the latest news from the JWGC:
https://www.ssa.org/12th-junior-world-gliding-championships/