12th May 2007
In April we announced that the Final for the first GP series will be held in New Zealand. This news was greeted with very positive responses from the qualified pilots and many Delegates also sent me emails of support for our decision.
Thank you to you all for your support of the Bureau.
This newsletter will, I trust, fill in some of the gaps from the April announcement.
The Final will be at Omarama starting on the 19th of December and with the last competition day planned to be the 24th of December. An additional two days of GP racing will then take place at Wanaka on the 27th and 28th of December as part of a wider multi-sport event.
The Final will be managed by three parties:
The GP is being held in New Zealand because Air Sports Ltd have found an investor who is prepared to back their vision of creating air sports as a media-presentable product. The investor, who is not from within the aviation industry, is in this for the long-haul and is willing to work with ASL to create the right market to enable us to all benefit from significant sponsorship in due course.
How do I see this benefiting the IGC? My dream is that we will derive sufficient funding from the media exposure created through ASL’s products to be able to provide funding from IGC to support our core WGC events. But, we need to be realistic; it is going to take some time to create the demand.
The investment in ASL guarantees the coverage for the Sailplane Grand Prix Final in New Zealand using streaming on the internet and on standard size indoor screens on site of:
These are the same products that were demonstrated in January 2006 with the addition of the internet coverage.
The investment in ASL also underwrites the cost of supporting the IGC officials and the pilots and their gliders to attend the Final.
It is not planned to provide any large-scale spectator facilities at Omarama, but to focus instead on providing high quality internet coverage, and hopefully some level of broadcast TV exposure.
The Wanaka event is being prepared and managed by “Flying-NZ” (the Royal New Zealand Aero Club – the NZ NAC) and it will include all of the media capability that ASL have available. Skydiving, hang gliding, paragliding, aerobatics, helicopters and ballooning are expected to participate in the Wanaka event.
I have recently written to all the other Air Sport Commission Presidents to ask for their support for this event.
This will, in a small way, allow us to rehearse the formats for the 2009 World Air Games.
For 2008 and 2009 we are now continuing with our plan, announced at the Plenum meeting in March, of running Qualifying GP race in 2008 with a Final in 2009.
Bob Henderson
President, IGC
May 12th, 2007