Competitons and Competitive Fly-ins

Paragliding and competitions have a difficult relationship. Have competitions a valid place in paragliding? The debate goes on, but is similar to the discussion in rock climbing that started in the eighties (after I had effectively quit the sport). One view is that the competitions just formalize what is going on in an underhand way. I buy this argument (i.e. "if you really think you're the best, prove it."). In any event, competitions have become firmly established for many years in paragliding and are, well, competitive and serious.

But this has left fly-ins with a dilemma; does it make sense to have a competition as part of a fly-in? Fly-ins are supposed to be fun, comps are supposed to be serious so how do you combine the two? One approach is making the competitive aspects fun / trivial (e.g. spot-landings or bomb-dropping). But it's genuinely difficult to have a credible competition as part of a fly-in.

The Lakeview fly-in has a cumulative distance competition. It is based on 'cumulative launch to landing distance' over 3 days and has a lot of flaws. Out and returns or perfect triangles are (literally) valueless. In many respects the most effective strategy is to have as many sled-rides as possible in 3 days - of course, this strategy would test the driver more than the pilot. However you do things, a good, dedicated driver is super-important and Dan, Tom and I (aka Team Nova) had the Mary Beth advantage.

Anyway, during the Lakeview fly-in the 'cumulative distance competition' is there and you have to choose how to address it. One approach is to ignore it. But the competition strikes a reasonable balance between 'fun' and 'testing skill', so we choose to fly the flights we wanted to make (rather than flights that would score well) but to record them for the comp.