Sebastian Kawa Does It Again!
Printer-friendly versionThe World Gliding Championships 2012 are now over. After the successful first part in Uvalde in August, the second part for the "non-flapped" classes Standard, Club and World was concluded on January 19 in Chavez/ Argentina.
And in Standard class Sebastian Kawa (PL), the reigning world champion persevered (on the last day) and won again. This comes after his win in the 15m class in Uvalde, making him the first pilot to win 2 world championships within one year. He is indisputably the number one competition pilot at the moment!
The Argentine home team could book the other 2 titles - Santiago Berea for the Club class and Sebastian Rieva for the World class. The best showing for the US team was Sean Franke, who took 6th place in the Club class (somewhat equivalent to the US Sports class).
From a technical standpoint it was not too exciting as there were no new sailplane designs. The winning design in the Standard class was the Discus 2a (now 14 years old) and the winning design in the Club class was the ASW-20 (how old is this plane now?). At least this shows that you don't have to invest in the latest high price designs for these two classes, which was of course the intention for the Club class.
For the World class it was a swan song - it was the last time it was FAI sponsored. It is now supposedly replaced by the 13.5m class w/o too many specifics. It is the end of a laudable attempt that started some 30 years ago to establish a "cheap" one design class that would serve as an entry into competition soaring. Unfortunately it never caught on - a modern composite glider is supposed to look sleek and the PW-5 just did not overcome the snicker factor, despite a well thought out construction, reasonable performance and very easy rigging.