Friday, May 10
    The eastern horizon is beginning to steadily cloud over and at 10:30 there's still not a living soul at Stranik. No one is even camping at the very peak. Only the brisk southeast wind is steadfastly fluttering the colored windsleeve on the starting ground. There's no one to photograph, no one to chat with. Am I even in the right place?

    Over the peak of the hill, dark bundles of cloud are rushing in and the temperature is noticeably lower than yesterday. The weather has really not been kind to this year's race. Further, there was the incident of an intentional manipulation of GPS data. One un-named racer turned on his GPS shortly before the close of the start window up at Stranik for the specified time, turning it off without actually taking off. Then a few hours later flew down below Stranik to record his place of landing and the scoring system of the race automatically gave him points for minimum distance. Truly a difficult trick to pick up on - not so however for the organizing team of Orolin and Vrbensky.

    Only after 10 o'clock do the racers gradually arrive and in light of the strong wind and relatively cloudy sky, the waiting for a decision regarding today begins.






    At 14:15 a start window is opened after all on a 25 km discipline, with the northern edge of Cadec as the goal, and the favorites immediately try to take advantage of the momentary lighting of the terrain through a gap in the clouds, to make a quick take off.

    Just before the start, the wrapped-in-thought Varvaro sends his greeting to Evicka, Sarka and Leontyna. Could it be he's chosen this moment to meditate upon his lovers and three at once to boot? It would be just like him, just remember this year's Brazil...



    The first 16-member group of pilots successfully finishes turning the rise far past Stranik as the sky clouds quickly over again. The wind picks up speed and more pilots are hanging in the wind about 200 meters above the peak. Several attempts at flying off end up more as blow-over past the hill and the method of landing, within view of Stranik looks it. There will be few points gained today.



    After previous, relatively point-poor racing days, the organizers have decided to shorten the minimum distance for calculating a pilot's points from 15 to 5 kilometers. This will lead to point differentiation of those pilots who land between the 5th and 15th kilometer of the route. As long as there are no protests, which clearly would have to be respected, against this change today, this will lead to the re-calculating of the results achieved so far. The changes will show up in retrospect only in the lower part of the overall placement, without affecting the higher positions. The border for recognition of the entire discipline remains on the 15th kilometer.

    Thanks to this change eight more pilots are battling today and 13 in total make it to the 25 km distant goal. The strong wind evidently most benefits Tonda Pallas, who already has, after 31 minutes of TRYSKOVEHO LETU, his hands full with trying to break over the goal and so lessens the jump Radek Vecera has in first position in the overall placement, to a mere 21 points.