Narrative

BCC 2024 Round Three – Sunday 28 July 2024 – Talybont

Ladies and Gentlemen,

I am very pleased to announce that the tracklogs have already been collated from last weekend’s third round of the season at Talybont. That’s a super turnaround from the round being called a week ago to getting scores on the board and my sincere thanks go to the team captains and pilots for facilitating this.

In addition, it would be remiss of me to not also express my sincere thanks to @DennisTrussler and the SE Wales Club for seeing the opportunity, setting up, delivering and closing out the round so slickly. The day was superbly set up and coordinated by Dennis, well supported by the team captains. It was most impressive to see over sixty eager pilots and supporters (a special mention to Kim Trussler who always does a brilliant behind the scenes job at SE Wales hosted rounds) in situ at 0915 at the Forest Car Park, ready for the 2023 prize giving (which was super fun if I do say so myself) which then flowed into the brief.

As per The Long Mynd round, a full write up of the day is in train and I won’t attempt to write another one here, sufficed to say that Talybont did what it does so well for us in the BCC and offered something for everyone. It was undoubtedly strong at times on take-off and indeed above it, which very active air, but the flying was impeccable and from low airtime pilots to super experienced mentors and coaches alike, the flying discipline was first class and set many people up for a day to remember.

The stats rather very much reinforce this, with 54 of the 62 pilots who made the dreaded walk up the hill (it never seems to get any easier) posting scores. More telling than that is that 20 of those flights earned Pilot Development prizes for their pilots, six of which were First Ever XCs, two were UK PBs and 12 were Overall PBs. Five of those PD flights were in excess of 100km and there were nine 100km+ flights altogether.

I won’t list all of the pilots here as it will take up too much space; however, please do head over to the round results page to see the full list of scores and PD prizes. I will though offer our collective congratulations to @willrice, Martin Worthington, Robert Hajek, Stephen, Matthew White and Eduardo Fagnani for breaking that bungee and going over the back for the first time. There is no better place to do it from than Talybont.

Note. If any pilot has inadvertently not claimed a PD prize, or claimed the wrong PD prize (that does happen), please let me know and I can make amendments as required.

And so on to the scores for the round. Led by @ArkMHicks and his brilliant 115km PB flight on his Phi Maestro 2 (EN B) who top scored and backed up by captain @peterlake, with his impressive semi-cross wind declared flight to goal at Shrewsbury (note he only gets the turnpoint distance for the BCC) together with Simon Dale and Stuart Kelly, the 1,000 points went to SW Wales Soaring Club. Hot on their heels in second place with 945 points were UK Armed Forces South aided by 100km+ flights from @bobmeph and @richmackie  (PB). In third place, with 806 points, were the South Devon Red team, with a PB for their top scorer Carl (127.4km). An honourable mention must go to @JamesasLloyd of the North Devon club, who flew the furthest on the day with an impressive 148.4km.

So now after three rounds, SE Wales Red, who earned a valuable 668 points from Talybont, remain atop the leaderboard with 2,277 points, with Wessex One remaining in contention in second place on 1,764 points. The other teams in the top six (Condors Red, North Devon Red, SW Wales (from only two scores) and UKAF South) are not that far behind. So, we are beautifully set for the remainder of the season.

The SportsTrackLive scene for the round can be found here:

SportsTrackLive | Paragliding - BCC 2024 Round Three – Sun 28 Jul 24 – Talybont | Matthew Tandy (created on 01/08/2024)