President's Letter to Delegates and Committee Chairmen 2009-2

Dear Friends

Thank you all for your votes of confidence for the members of the Bureau and myself at the elections.

Your level of support humbles me and, as I said in Lausanne, the credit really must go to the Bureau who all work extremely well together and with the shared interest of improving our sport.

We achieved a lot of work at the Plenary meeting and I was especially pleased by the contributions of Ian Oldaker and Werner “micro” Scholtz; their presentations have provoked a lot of thought.

We have already invited "micro" to attend our mid-year Bureau meeting in August to work on possible glider “star-ratings” to improve the desire for safety enhancements.

My congratulations to Roland Stuck, Max Stevens and Doris Grove for their well deserved awards.

Congratulations also to the USA and to Argentina for their successful bids to host the WGC in 2012.

I am pleased to also be able to give you a very positive update on the 2009 Sailplane GP Final. Our colleagues in Chile have been working hard on their options to host the Final. We have also provided a worst-case costing scenario to the pilots who have already qualified for the Final.

I am very encouraged to be able to advise you that every pilot who has qualified, or is a reserve, has said they support the Final being held in Santiago. This is great news and shows the level of enthusiasm that the top pilots have for this style of racing.

To further improve the understanding of our SGP I have written to all Gliding Presidents to ensure that they know why we created the SGP and our objectives for the event. We need their support now at national level to further develop the SGP.

Best regards

Bob Henderson
President, IGC
20th March 2009