Its an interesting situation. Just to put it into perspective I was not at Portugal. I have flown at the WC in 95,99,01,05 and EC in 96,98,00,02,04. I fly very little now but do compete at the odd UK contest and an occasional international. The great advantage of being in Europe is that you can easily get to contests in other countries. I was ok but not finals quality. I made the semis in 01,02,04 and 05 with my best results being 13 in Europe and 26 in Worlds. In WC 01 in Ireland I placed 8th in one round - but that is the strange thing in these contests - it was my 4th flight of the prelims and so I was up against some pilots who had flown 1, 2 or 3 days before - they may have been flying in a gale - I was not. So that just puts it in perspective.

First, none of the US pilots have made a comment - a dignified silence.

I am not sure that anyone is arguing against a CPLR victory. Is it a fluke or wrong that the guy who has won the WC in 99,01,03,05 and was 2nd in 07 (by all accounts he would probably have won it if he had not had an e/c - but he did so that is tough) also won in 09?

The US folks should not get into thinking that all European judges will favour a European pilot over a non Euro competitor. Naruke won in 97 in Poland. And remember that at EC (European Champs) if the contest is in say Switzerland they will favour judges from Switzerland, Germany, Austria, Liechtenstein, mayby Italy each of whom may be more aligned (I am not saying biased) to their style than the French, Belgian judges who might be aligned to the French style.

CPLR has won in USA 99, Ireland 01, Poland 03, France 05 and Portugal 09 - the first and hardest WC was in the back yard of the USA. In the final in 99 the competitors had 3 flights. From memory CPLR flew 3 different styles - smallish, medium and large and won each flight. Using his B model!!!! Because on the practice day before the final his fuel tank had burst on his A model and melted the foam wings!!

I went to a conference once by a sports psychologist/coach (he had trained the British athletics team, Boris Becker - the German tennis player, Daley Thompson - British olympic gold decathlete, the Ferrari Formula 1 team) and the thing that sticks in my mind is the following comment he made. He said "A lot of people think that the difference between winning and losing is huge. It's not! The difference between winning and losing is tiny. The consequences are huge!" Just think about it. If I said which US swimmer won 7 golds in the 2008 Beijing olympics I bet most of you would know. Anyone tell me a swimmer who came second in ANY of those races without looking on the internet? Even if I told you they lost by only 1/100ths of a second!!

If you look at the finals in Pombal 2009 QQ beat Benoit PLR on the first 3 rounds of the final - it was only that amazing 4th round ( I was not there but some people have said that it was like watching C (not B)PLR fly) that BPLR overtook QQ. In fact Schulman and Onda were ahead of BPLR having beaten him in rounds 1,2 and 3 of the final. The guy just had an amazing Unknown 2 flight and it lifted him to 2nd place. Will he do it again - probably not (altho' a lot of people in Europe say that if Benoit bothered to practice like Christophe he could be better than him).

So don't knock the judges or the pilots or anything. It seems that Benoit had a blinder and came up from way down to 2nd place.

Look at Gerhard Mayr - a relative unknown but what a flyer. Very different style from all the others - smaller slower schedule with SOOOO much control - I saw him at Romilly in France. In Pombal 2009 he came from nowhere after rounds 1-3 of the final and scored a 992 in round 4.

Why were there little or no comments on RCU after the WC 2007 moaning about the judging etc etc? Maybe it was because the USA had the winning pilot and the 2nd place team - not a lot to moan about. You came second by about 8 points out of 8600!! Less than 1%. The differnce between winning and losing is tiny - the consequences are HUGE!!

A few other points

1 The aim of the WC is to find the best pilot in the world. I am afraid that if you are in the "grey" mass outside the top 40 you are unlikely to get in the semis. You have one flight a day over 4 days. You could be in perfect conditions on day one and a hurricane in day 4. You may have your engine cut on the perfect day. that is life and is just tough. But if you were in the top 10 you would still be good enough to get in the top 30 and the semis. The pilots between 20 and 40 - well it is a bit of a lottery if you get in the top 30. Conditions may go against you. Or CPLR may have a mega flight when you have your best flight so your normaalised score is still low etc. As for the top 20 they are usually good enough to make sure they get in the top 30 and the semis.

2 The best 7 or 8 will get in the final. 2 or 3 out of the next 5 or 6 will get the next few places. But you are looking for the best pilot or top 3 in reality and you can be pretty sure that they are in the top 10 and in the final.

4 Why start afresh? Well it is so that the judges see all 10 pilots in a short period of time - all 10 within a 2 hour period. It makes for much better comparisons and judging I think (better than spread over 4 days!!). And it makes a VERY exciting contest.

5 Why only count 2 flights? People DO have the odd mechanical problem and we are looking for the best pilot. It would be unfortunate to lose a WC or EC because of an e/c or an aileron servo going faulty. I think it is fair and as you have seen it can throw up dramatic finals as we saw this year with Benoit and Mayr (and with the French beating the Japanese).

6 Why have normalisation? Surely it is essential. We saw in Portugal a very "hard" judging panel scoring lower than all other panels. Without normalisation it is possible a large proportion of their scores would have been dropped - which is wrong. You could see a situation where a pilot with his best flight wins that round but beciause they are such a hard panel he has to drop that flight - ludicrous!

7 Just have a look at the finals from Pombal - before round 4 of the final QQ was in 3rd place behind CPLR and Onda. It seems that QQ had a poor UK2 schedule and some others had a great UK 2 and overtook him. Fine margins.

So, I was not there. My observations are made from a distance and based on previous experiences.

But from what I see there can be no accusation of inaccurate judging and no USA pilot has made such an allegation - to their credit.

Roll on WC 2011 in the USA!!

Brandon