Kobala Open 2021
Last year, despite the corona crisis, we decided to organize the national championship. This year, although there was still a lot of uncertainty and the last year's experience, when most of the pilots canceled at the last minute, wasn't the most encouraging, we decided to accept the honor of organizing such an event yet again. Thus, between the 16th and 20th of August, the Slovenian open national championship in hang gliding Kobala Open 2021, took place in Tolmin again. It was organized by a similar team as last year, the Hang Gliding Club Maribor with volunteers. This is now the fourth year that our club hosted the championship. We are glad that people trust us, as this year's participation was double compared to last year. We are talking about pilots from at least 12 different countries around the world. The number of participants has reached 35. This is quite an enviable number for hang gliding in the current global situation. Attendance was higher because the Czech team that we missed last year, was able to come to Slovenia and compete. We are especially proud of the three female pilots, who dared to compete with all the pilots in the air, also took part in our competition. One of them surprised us the most, as she participated in the competition in Slovenia, although she originates from Kazakhstan.
The competition lasted five days, of which we had three flight days. This year's novelty was the introduction of live-tracking. The competition becomes more interesting as people can follow it online and observe the course of the event with a minimal time lag. This way of conducting the competition reduces the amount of stress of the organizers because we know where the pilots are at all times, and in case of an accident, it is much easier to organize a rescue operation. Thank God this was not necessary this year - again. We performed 3 daily tasks in the length of 72km, 133km, and 90km. The competition was without security incidents or any other negative surprises.
On Sunday afternoon or towards evening, when it all started with the registration of pilots, we were positively surprised when the line of competitors had no end. This is in contrast to last year when we sat alone and waited to see if anyone would show up. So after registration, we knew that the race would be interesting and that we also have some world-class pilots among the participants. Satisfied, we went to bed and could hardly wait for Monday morning. The weather forecast was encouraging and it started. Again, we took people to the Kobala take-off, created a daily task, looked at the sky, and waited. Waited for the first pilot to take off. We knew then that we had made the right decision to make the race interesting and that, despite knowing the pilots quite well from previous years, we could not talk about a possible favorite. Already on the first day, one of the female competitors was in the top fifteen.
Tuesday and Wednesday followed when we canceled the day before it even started due to strong winds or storms. The decision was the right one, the pilots accepted it without any problems, as they noticed that the weather conditions were not suitable for the competition. It is necessary to adapt to all pilots, even those who are not very experienced. For us, the organizers, this helped us to arrange all the other organizational matters, we took a look at the pictures of the first day and organized a feast for all participants. For such loyal competitors, who return to us every year, regardless of the distance, they have to travel, this is the least we can do for them during the competition.
We woke up on Thursday morning, drank coffee while checking the weather, and decided it was appropriate for the second day to spice up the match a bit. After all, people came to fly and we want to offer them that. The weather conditions allowed the composition of a longer task, so we made a 133 km long task. For the second day in a row, Primož Gričar, a Slovenian pilot who competes for Germany, was the first to reach the finish line. As the fastest, he was in goal after a good three hours of competitive flight, to which we must add some time before the start in the air. The average speed was therefore more than 40 ~ km/h! After landing, everyone soon hid due to fatigue. How do we know they were tired? Many did not even drink a well-deserved goal beer.
So the competition was slowly coming to an end, there was speculation about the winners, and we preferred to focus our thoughts on the daily task. Departure to the take-off started an hour earlier so that in the evening we have a little more time to prepare for the closing ceremony. Although there were relatively few Slovenians this year, they were in the top ten every day. In the last daily task, Jože Frim surprised us by finishing second. At the same time, due to problems with the instrument, he preferred to stay on the ground the previous days, otherwise, the results would have been slightly different. As many as 23 pilots managed to fly to the finish line, and got a well-deserved beer. The awards ceremony followed.
The final results of the open championship were (from the third to the first place): Ujhelyi Balázs (HUN), Dan Vyhnalik (CZE), Primož Gričar (DEU). Stanislav Galovec was third in the Slovenian national group, followed by young pilot Jure Bečan and Franc Peternel in the first place.
