Author: Michaela Rendlová

Good evening everyone!

Today we had our first racing task at the EGC with very different conditions to yesterday. As our meteorologist Horác said “we turned off the clouds today, but unfortunately, most of them…”. The competitors encountered patches of high cumulus and then sections of blue thermal on their task with the 15m class flying 405 km, Standard class 389 km, and Club class 369 km.

The competitors proved to be very capable and managed to reach the speeds of up to 117 kph in the 15m class, 115 kph in Standard class, and 106 in Club class. Our daily winners are Lukasz Grabowski (POL), Jeroen Jennen (BEL), and Hugo Corbille (FRA) respectively.

Congratulations to everyone and rest well for the next days. Even though the forecast is a bit more pessimistic, the weather should be useable!

Today we had a “weather lottery” that luckily ended up with us winning.

All the classes flew 2 hour AAT, that was shortened from 2:30 AAT due to much worse weather than expected by all the forecasts. The club class fortunately got on task before a mid-level cloud cover patch weakened the weather around the airfield. However, the standard class and 15m class had a very complicated pre-start situation with the necessity to stay airborne until around 16:00, when majority of the competitors were finally able to get on task with a promising window ahead of them.

Currently, the winner in club class is Jacek Fils (POL) with 81 kph, in standard class Norbert Scarlat (ROM) with almost 99 kph, and in 15m class Filip Bojanowski (DEN) with 89.67 kph.

Congratulations to everyone who made it back home safely, and don’t worry if you were not the lucky one today… we have the whole championship ahead of us, so stay motivated!

(check out our gallery for all the photos from today)

Today we had the official Opening Ceremony of the 22nd European Gliding Championships 2024 at Náměstí T.G. Masaryka. From 16:00 the citizens of Tábor could view the parade of all the 25 nations competing at the EGC, alongside several interviews and speeches of important figures explaining soaring as a sport, and wishing our competitors all the best. Additionally, we had a surprise at the end of the ceremony; a lowpass of two fighter jets Gripen JAS39 to celebrate the official start of our championship.

Unfortunately, the weather for tomorrow does not look too promising, but we will be ready in full power for any usable window, and if it does not work out, the competitors will have time to enjoy the beautiful region of Southern Bohemia!

For live news follow our instagram EGC_2024 and for daily dose of smiles and planes check out our Google Gallery (and feel free to add photos of your own too).