Thursday 28.04.05
    The sky is clear again after yesterday's front passing and a visibility excelent. There is almost no wind at landing zone and though bad news about a direction and a speed of the wind comes from the taking off area, everybody depends on the thermal which will force the right direction of the wind and competitors go up.

    "It took even my hat away from my head," some pilot evaluates relatively high speed of the wind which blows at the taking off zone from the back. Only a small hard core of pilots unpacks their bags and the direction of the wind can be seen very well on small clouds developing shortly after noon. Fortunatelly the thermal changes the direction of the wind at the taking of zone and a 75.4km long task is declared. It has a form of letter "Z" with two turning points. The window opening is shifted to forty past twelve after the prostest of the pilot who needs to go to the toilet and three minutes aren't enough for him. Of course, he doesn't belong to Czech pilots, even two minutes are enough for them.

    "See you on the goal," German pilots say goodbye determinedly to each other and go to their gliders. The whole racing field starts moving immediately after the start window opening and thanks to a strong and rather turbulent thermal activity a great grape of coloured canopies fly towards an edge of a start circle to wait.

    While some pilots land near the second turning point at the periphery of Sopot shortly past 2 p.m. the group of fifty pilots turn the point high above their heads and set out for a last leg flight eastward. The advance is very fast thanks to the help of the northwest wind, a speed of raising up to 8m/s and a cloudbase in a height over 3000 meters. At 3.29 p.m. the winner of today's discipline Aljaz Valic from Slovenia flies over the goal line, Brazilian Rodrigo Montiero makes it about two minutes later and Italian pilot Luca Donini reaches the goal as the third. Altogether 84 pilots reached the goal successfully, Petra Krausova was the fastest woman today which entails a shift to the top of the women category.

    "But I didn't fall, I've just landed," tries to explain one Slovak pilot to Bulgarian rescuers who ran up to him out of breath to save his life or at least dig in his body. He fell down 600 meters in a strong turbulency, his canopy recovered only tightly above a ground and he landed softly at last. He took off his sweat clothes, got down into a grass and began to thank God to save his life this nice and sunny day. In the meanwhile the strong wind scattered his canopy which looked at a great distance like a signal to rescue him.

    Finally, there are changes in the total ranking after three days without any points and Swiss pilot Christian Maurer leads the competition now.