President's Letter to Delegates and Committee Chairmen 2007-4

Dear Delegates

Our mid-year Bureau meeting is being held in Paris at the end of this week. Next week is the Air Sports Commission President’s meeting and the FAI General Conference in Rhodes, Greece.

Unfortunately I am not going to be able to attend these meetings because I have a course I need to complete at Air New Zealand starting on the 8th of October. Great timing I know!

Our 1st Vice-President, Eric Mozer, will therefore be chairing the Bureau meeting and attending the Air Sports Commission President’s meeting and the General Conference on my behalf. I know that Eric will do a great job and I’m sure that he will find the General Conference interesting.

I have sent a copy of my IGC Report to the General Conference to you all in a separate email. Please distribute this Report within your National Body.

Congratulations to the organizers, winners and participants of the Women’s, Juniors, and two European Gliding Championships held this past summer. The winners are listed in my attached report.

The Bureau is reviewing the planned GP Series for 2008 and 2009 and will decide on the timing of qualifying events and the Final at the Bureau meeting this week. We are keen to minimize any potential conflicts between the primary World Gliding Championships, the World Air Games and the GP series, so want to be careful about the timetable that we create for the GP. I appreciate that this is frustrating for many people, but we need to establish the best timing for these events.

An interesting development this last European summer has been the production of a dedicated TV series featuring the "world’s best airborne action" and many official FAI Championships. This project was undertaken by of Mr Jeff Zaltmann, CEO of Flying Aces Ltd, a London-based media company. Television coverage of FAI events was produced at no cost to the Organisers.

The Women’s WGC at Romontin was included in this coverage and footage from this WGC has been shown on Reuters, SNTV, EBU, Transworld Sport and Sports Unlimited series (which includes Fox and Sky Sports).

Finally, the IGC Ranking List will be archived at the end of September and from October this year will be calculated under the new Annex D rules. The rules for inclusion of the GP in the Ranking list are not yet finalised but will be included before the World GP Final.

Best Regards and Safe Flying

Bob Henderson
President, IGC
October 2nd, 2007