Hi there everybody, welcome to another episode of the Cloudbase Mayhem. My plan this week was to release what you're about to hear as just a short primer and then do the show on the back side of that. But just got off the horn here with Bill Hughes and the primer turned into about a 40 minute talk and so I'm just going to leave this one as a full show. I am traveling right now, helping my mom out with the surgery so I do not have my pro gear with me. but hopefully the sound will be all fine and dandy on my end. This is basically, I've been getting a lot of questions on how to get into World Cups. How does it all work? What does WPRS mean? What is civil? What is FAI? And we answer all this for you.
Bill works for all of these organizations. He's the treasurer of the World Cup to the PWCA, and he works for civil, And he's been at this game an awful long time and understands it intimately, and understands, you know, Cat One and Cat Two and NTSS and rankings and letters. And here you go, we explain it all if you're, uh, wanting to play a little bit at the at the highest level, have a listen. Cheers.
bill good to see your face hasn't been too long since we were just racing down at the the Monarca and the Superfinal. I've been getting, as I've told you before we started recording, I'm getting a lot of questions from listeners who are keen on watching this stuff, but don't really understand how it works and how you start competing in World Cups. And so I thought I'd go to the expert, the guy who works for all these organizations and understands it better than anybody and also understands the scoring. And so I thought where we'd start is just the difference between the various organizations? What is civil? What is the FAI? What is the World Cup? How do they differentiate? How do they work together?
Why is it important? Let's start there.
Okay. Great to be here again, Gavin, and good to see you. Wish it was in warmer conditions like we had in Mexico.
It's just perfect every day, isn't it? It's just an amazing place. That
was nice. That was nice. Yeah, so all the organizations are kind of confusing. So at the kind of like top is FAI. So FAI is responsible for all air sports all around the world, and they're actually an Olympic organization. So even though paragliding isn't an Olympic sport, there are other air sports that have been Olympic sports or, you know, demonstrations for various things. But, but they're actually affiliated with the with the IOC, so that helps a lot of countries, especially like in Asia, get sponsorship dollars and things like that, because they can say, "Hey, FAI wants to do a competition here." You know, they're an Olympic affiliated organization, and so they can get get sponsorship that way.
Civil is one of the air sports organizations underneath FAI, and Civil, CIBIL, is responsible for all hang gliding and paragliding activities. So FAI kind of like sets the umbrella guidelines for the various air sports. And then there's commissions for CIBIL. And then there's like also a parachuting organization. There's a aero modeling organization and so on. Um, USHPA is affiliated with NAA, which is the U.S. National Air Sports Association, and NAA is a member of FAI. So, when we sanction an application, when we sanction a competition in the U.S., we're sanctioning it as a FAI category 2 competition, and the reason that USHPA can do that is NAA, who's an FAI member has ceded that responsibility to, uh, to the, to the, to USPA.
And so
will every country have, uh, and you know, I'm asking these questions that we're trying to kind of paint the very generic, you know, easy picture for people that don't understand. And most people don't. Is, is the, is the, is USHPA something that every country has something like USHPA and something like the NAA? They, in other words, to have competitions, you have to be sanctioned under the FAI.
Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. Every country, um, can have an organization and, and most of them do like NAA and USHPA. Um, you don't have to, but if you don't have an an organization like that and don't pay your dues to the FAI, then you can't do Cat 2 competitions and you can't send people to the Cat 1 competitions, which are the Continental Championships and the World Championships.
Okay. And civil would be the ones who create the WPRS, correct? Correct. Are they in charge of the, in the WPRS is the world ranking. Right.
Exactly. Yeah. Civil manages the WPRS. They manage all the sanctioned applications for category two competitions. They create the rule books. So you've heard of section, or everybody will have heard of section seven. So section seven is the part of the FAI rule book that governs It's paragliding and hang gliding, and Civil is the organization that manages that rulebook.
And the rulebook you're talking about would have how competitions are scored, protested, all the things that go, you know, how they're
operated. Exactly, exactly. One common thing that people don't fully understand is the difference between a Cat 1 and a Cat 2 competition. So in Cat 1 competition, that competition is actually run by civil. So civil sends a steward and a jury, and it's run strictly per the Section 7 rulebook. A Category 2 competition is the purview of the country who sanctioned it, and it's recommended that they follow Section 7, and most of them generally do. But you can override the Section 7 rules with local rules in a Category 2 competition, and you can't do that in a Category 1 competition.
I.e., the Monarca is Category 2. Exactly. It's open because they can override the rules. So give us some examples of Cat 1.
So there's four Category 1s in paragliding, and then there's separate ones in hang gliding. So in paragliding, you've got the continental championships. So there's Europeans, there's Pan Ams, and then there's the Asians. So each of those is, you know, geographically bound. And so each, so like, for example, in the Pan Americans, anybody in North and South America is invited to send pilots to that competition. And then same for Europe, same for Asia. And then the World Championship is the overall, you know, is the overall highest level of Category 1 competitions.
And these are run by whom? Well,
they all have a local organizer, but they're all run by FAI. Just like the World Championship, even for the Continentals, the FAI sends a steward and a jury, and it's all run strictly per the Section 7 rule books.
And important to understand, because we're getting there with World Cup, how to get into World Cups, but these, you do not qualify to Cat 1 via letters. We'll talk about letters here in a little bit, but how do you make the Worlds or the Pan-Americans or the Europeans or the Asians? Yeah,
that's a good question. So we'll start with the continentals. So in the Pan-Americans, each country that's an FAI member is invited. There's what's called an allocation. So, there's allocations done in multiple rounds, and you start off with every country getting to send usually three pilots. So, it's usually three of one gender plus one female. And then, based on how many countries sign up and say that they want to send pilots, you then allocate more slots per nation based on their WPRS ranking. ranking, so you know if Brazil is ranked, uh, number one in the in the Pan-American region, which I think they are right now, they would get, uh, the first pick, and then I believe we're second, so then we would get the second pick.
So if, if, uh, let's say after round one you've got 115 pilots allocated, uh, then there's 125 pilots total, so you'd have 10 slots that you could allocate, so so Brazil could send one more, we could send one more, and then on down the list until the competition is full. And if a country doesn't want to send three pilots or doesn't have three pilots that qualify, then those slots open up and are reallocated as well. And each country decides how it wants to send its pilots. So, most countries have just a normal ranking system like the U.S. does where they just look at the results of the pilots' competitions and rank them accordingly.
But you don't have to do it that way. So, some countries do it a little bit more arbitrarily. France, for example, doesn't follow their ranking at all. Their team leader just chooses who they want to send on
their team.
Yeah, it's 100 %
arbitrary. Yeah. I was curious to find that out. So they just decide based on who's, who's racing well at that level and, you know, team dynamics and they choose that
way. Exactly. Exactly. So, so that's how the Continentals works. And then the Worlds works exactly the same way, just on a world, world level. So, you know. And
the Continentals happen every year, but the Worlds are every other year,
correct? No, they're both every other year and they alternate. So this year is Worlds. So there won't be Pan-Americans or Asians. And then next year, we'll have the Pan-Americans, Asians, and Europeans.
Okay. So next organization I think we should talk about is the World Cup. How are they different? And how do you go compete in World Cups? Okay.
Yeah, the World Cup is really a completely separate organization. However, World Cup competitions are also Cat 2 competitions. So you do still get WPRS points for them. But aside from that, there's really no linkage. So World Cup was set up, I don't know, 15, 20 years ago by a group of pilots that just kind of wanted to have their own thing outside the civil structure. I think back then civil and FAI were like more complicated and they just they wanted something simpler that they could decide how the scoring was going to work and so on and so forth. So World Cups are run by the Paralympic World Cup Association, which is a nonprofit headquartered in France.
And there's five World Cup events each year, and then there's a Superfinal. And in addition to those, there's pre-World Cups, which allow people to qualify for the World Cup events. and then it also allows the World Cup to vet potential locations for future World Cups. They check out the organizer, they check out the site to see if it's at the level of a World Cup. World Cup competitions have some of the highest level pilots of any competition because of the way you qualify for World Cup events.
Okay. So if you're a budding comp pilot, you want to start racing pre-World Cups, World Cups, what's the path?
Okay. Yep. So there's a couple of different ways you can get into the World Cup. So World Cup selection is done by letters, and everybody will have two letters. And there's a number of different ways you could get those letters. So the kind of easiest way to understand is every country can have a national championship and a league. And your ranking within your league and within your national championship gives you a letter. So, for example, for the U.S., our league is the NTSS ranking. That's our national ranking. And then the national championship is our national championship.
So it's the U.S. net. So it's your score within that.
So those generate letters and there's a what's called a nation's table. So each the level of the letter that gets generated is based on essentially how good the country is. So there's from level one to level seven, so France is pretty much always a level one country, so it has really good letters. Um, let me look at something real quick and I'll tell you. So if you're—if you're a level one country, um, your winner of your national championship is going to to get an A, and I think second place also also gets an A. Uh, yeah.
And and then it, you know, goes down, uh, until like, let's say if you're a level one country, your 20th place pilot gets a level gets an E for for a letter, uh, a country that's not as good, um, like a level seven country, the winner of their national championship would get a D in their letter as opposed to an A. And the way the level is calculated is you take the top three pilots from that country in the last world championship and the top three pilots from all of the World Cups that were flown last year. So taking France, for example, in the last world championship, they had the second, third and fourth ranked pilot.
So that's so that's pretty good. Yeah, that's pretty good. And they had and they had and four of the World Cups last year were won by French pilots. So that's five. Yeah. Four of the five. So that's plus the Superfinal plus the Superfinal. Exactly, so that's—so that's, you know, three points from PWC events and, uh, nine points, uh, yeah, nine points from the—from the world. So you add those up and that's their score, and the lower your score is, the better, um, the better, uh, your level is. So, so this year, um, there's—there's five countries that are level one and then a handful of countries that are level two.
We're level two, which is actually really good, and then it—then it kind of like drops off from there. So last year we were level three, um, we had some pilots that did pretty well in World Cups last year and so we—we bumped up to level two this year.
interesting and you're looking at something what are you looking at to to go see that. Can anybody look at that?
Yeah, anybody can look at it. So if you go to the PWCA website, you can click on rules and you can see the nation's table and then you can also see the rule book. So the nation's table changes every year and it gives the current ranking of all the nations. And then the rule book has the table that says, okay, if you're a level one, then these are are the letters that you get if you're a level two here these are letters that you get and
That was interesting; you just spelled out something that I was unaware of, that the nation's tables is based on results, right? And in a sense, WPRS is obviously, but that's not the same, you know? You, you're, it's, it, the, the two don't seem to tie in, right, there when it comes to letters? Yeah, I know, know that
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, the one of the things that PWC doesn't like about WPRS, which I think is a fair criticism, is that WPRS is very European-centric. So, if you—if you live in Europe, there's, you know, on any given weekend, there's probably two or three national championships that you can drive to that are going to give you really high WPRS points because, you know, top pilots from Germany and Switzerland and France, you know, just might decide to show up on any given weekend at a competition. Whereas in the U.S. and Asia, that's not the case at all. So it's kind of a...
Yeah, we don't have any comps that would be equivalent. Exactly. Yeah, exactly. We don't have enough people.
So it's a real catch-22. You know, we don't have high WPRS-ranked pilots, or not as many as Europe Europe has. So therefore our competitions aren't worth as much. And because our competitions are worth as much, we again, can't
get ranked,
can't get ranked, you know, so it's just kind of a cycle. So the nation's table is, is meant to, to deal with that. So like, for example, if we have, you know, three really hot pilots that go to a bunch of, uh, uh, PDABC events and score reasonably well, we can generate good letters for the country. We don't have to, uh, you know, You know, we don't have to somehow figure out how to draw, you know, Russ Ogden and Luc Armant over to the U.S. to fly competitions in order to get up in the high WPRS rankings.
Yeah. And I noticed, you know, this year as an example to back that up, I think I was third in the in the league results and I got an A from it. I was blown away. It really surprised me. And so that's because the nation's table was two. Right.
Exactly. We're second. Yeah, exactly. That's because we're level two in the nation's table this year. Yeah.
Okay. Fascinating. Okay. So to just summarize this for someone getting into it. Okay. Well, actually first, how do you get into a PWC? A pre PWC? Yeah.
So anybody can enter a pre PWC. So a pre PWC is just an open event. They're not allowed to, you know, discriminate based on, you know, WPRS or letters or anything like that. So it's just open registration. Anybody can sign up. And it's typically pretty easy to get into a lot of the pre-PWCs. In any given year, there might be 10 or 12 pre-PWCs. And they're just regular cat to events that the organizer has decided to make a pre PWC, and the PWC has to accept it. It has to be like a reasonable, you know, a reasonable chance that this could be a venue for a future PWC. At some point, we're not gonna—we're not gonna make some completely rinky-dink competition, you know, with eight pilots in the middle of nowhere, a pre PWC.
So that's the best way. That's how I got—I got in by doing a pre PWC, and it was the one in Chelan, actually, that happened years ago, like 15, 16 years ago or whatever. So I got a good enough letter from that to get into a PWC, and then I got a good enough score from that PWC to get into the Superfinal that year. So it's a ladder effect. So you get letters from pre-PWCs, from your national championship, from your league, and then you can also travel to other people's national championships. So you could go to Canada's national championship, for example. It wouldn't be as highly ranked as the U.S., but it's still going to generate a letter.
if you win the canadian national championship you're you're going to get a decent letter out of it you probably won't get an a but you might get a c or b something like that now
I think, I think something that would be wise for us to talk about because this is, again, it's going to be a little different, but for the most part, from the people I've asked, it's pretty similar. Now, France is subjective to make the world's team, or you know, right? Uh, but they also have their own ranking system, and as we do. So folks listening, if you're not part of the U.S., we're going to be talking about the NTSS, but it's almost certainly very similar in the country you're in. So Bill, just explain how the NTSS works and why it's important. Yeah, yeah.
So the NTSS is our It's our ranking system, so it's intended to give U.S. pilots a fair shot at getting a decent ranking and possibly being selected for a Continentals or a World Team. And the way it works is you take your best four scores, and only two of those can be foreign comps. So what we're trying to avoid is we're trying to avoid our best pilots just flying around the world and doing other people's comps and getting a bunch of points from those. And, you know, A, not supporting the U.S. competition scene by not going to the events, which hurts our organizers.
And then B, you know, competing against the actual U.S. pilots so they're proving, you know, that, you know, they're at a certain level versus the U.S. pilots. So, like, for example, you might have – and we do count Mexico as a U.S. comp. We made that change, I think, like four or five years ago. So your best scores might be Monarca and Chelan, for example, those two competitions, and then two foreign competitions. And those generate a certain number of points, and that adds up to your NTSS score. Each competition can have a maximum of 600 points. So first place in a fully valid comp in the U.S. would get you 600 points.
If you go to a foreign competition, then the pilot quality validity is based on the U.S. pilots that are there, and then foreign pilots are given a score analogous to the score that a U.S. pilot would give based on their WPRS ranking. So go ahead. it.
Well, I was just going to say, for example, and I think this is where people get really confused. You know, if you, you're trying to get a letter, there's a comp going on right now in Columbia that I hadn't even heard of. It's happening right now. It's on Air Tribune and the pilot quality is really high. Seb Espina is there. He was top 10 in the Superfinal. And there's a, there's a bunch of really good pilots there. And, and, And so that's going to be a fully valid comp, and as I understand looking at it, and you know, if you did reasonably well there, you're going to get a really good score, and that could be one of your two foreign scores. And again, if you're not in TSS, it's going to be very similar, you know, right? You know, it'd be a very important comp for a British citizen to go to, or Swiss, or anybody.
You know, there's—there's talent from all over the world. They're—they're highly ranked in WPRS, at least the top 20. Uh, you—you know, Michael Gerlach's there. He was top 10 in the Superfinal. So you've got great quality there and you can get a great score. And then that's, that alone will not give you a letter, but that's going to be one of your top scores if you do well. And that will, that Will Gadd up when it comes to the league score.
Exactly. Exactly. Yep.
So two letters, explain that. How does that work?
Yeah. So you get two letters. So let's say, Let's say that somebody went to three PWC events last year; they did the U.S. National Championship and, and of course, they're in the league, so they have and they did two pre-PWCs, so that would give them seven chances to get a letter. Actually, it would generate seven letters and then, and then your, your, your PWC letters for getting into competitions are just your best two. So if you got an A from the U.S. Nats and you got a C from the pre PWC that you did and everything else is lower, then your letters would be AC. So when it comes time to select people for a PWC, you start with the first letter.
So all of the A's are selected first. And then to differentiate between the A's, you start at AA, then you go to AB, AC, AD, and on down the list. And then after all of the A's who have signed up have either, you know, decided that they're going to go or declined, then you go to the B's, then you go to the C's, then you go to the D's. So that's how that works.
And how does, okay, I want to go do a World Cup in Brazil. What letters would I need to get in?
Yeah, it's different. That's a good question. So it's different for different venues. use uh typically for brazil um you could probably get in with the c and and possibly even even a d uh and south africa you
only need you've got a C or a D; second letter doesn't even matter, right?
Exactly, exactly. Yeah, okay. And then, for if in France, uh, it's probably not going to go below B, um, so because obviously there's so many good pilots in France and Europe, and it's easy for them to get to. For a PWC in Asia, uh, it might go down to H or I, or even even lower, because there aren't a lot of pilots in Asia that have high ranking letters, which is why the Paragliding World Cup started the Asian tour, which we can talk about if you want. Um, and then South Africa, for example, sometimes has a PWC, and that's hard for a lot of people to get to. A lot of Europeans just aren't going to go to the trouble of getting there. So, you know, you can get into, um, South Africa with a, with a lower letter.
So if I was a new pilot and I was like wanting to break into the PWC, I would look at the list of, uh, pre PwCs and I would pick one that is, you know, I wouldn't pick one in France or in Spain. I wouldn't pick one in Europe at all because it's going to, you know, it's going to be highly competitive and there's going to be a really really good pilots there. I would pick one in South America. Last year, there was one in Chile that anybody could have gotten into that. Or I'd pick one in Korea or South Africa or Canada, if Canada had a pre PWC. And then I would just go to as many pre-PWCs as I could and eventually hope to get a good score.
And because really, If you're looking to be be expeditious, that's the easiest way to get a letter. It's one comp, seven days, boom, you're done. Whereas the league, it's the end of the year, it's the rankings as of January 1st the following year, so it's the whole year you got, you got to, you got to wait around, yeah, and say, and for the, and for the nationals as well. And countries differ here, as some nationals are one event, you know, ours is typically two or even three, right? And so again, it's kind of the whole season, exactly before that's it's tabulated and submitted, correct? Yeah,
yeah, exactly. Yeah. And, and, you know,
the U.S. has really gotten better and better. I mean, we have a lot of really good pilots now. So, you know, it used to be when I first started flying that it was, it was easier back then to be in the top 15, top 20 in the U.S. than it is now. Now we've got a ton of really good pilots. And so, you know, it's, it's hard to, it's hard to count on getting a good letter from your, from your U S league, uh, right.
Okay. So that makes even weightier that, so as an organizer, and this is curious, cause I've just recently started being an organizer. What, what's the doubt? Is there any downside to declaring your cat to, uh, uh, pre PWC? I mean, you know, that was quite easy for us to do. We paid the money and it costs a little bit more. But I think it's relevant to talk about the hurdles that you have to go through. I mean, in my case, if I didn't have you, that would have been quite expensive because we have to fly them over. So talk about that just a little bit for those curious about running comps.
Yeah, yeah. So it's – yeah, there's no downside other than the cost. So when you want to be a pre PWC, you have to pay the fee, which right now is 800 euros. and then you also have to pay for the observer. You don't have to pay for their flight; PWC pays for that, but you have to pay for their accommodations and their food. You have to get them from the airport to the venue and back, so you know, depending upon where you are, all of that can can add up. I mean, in a place like, you know, Chelan, or or even any place in the U.S., you know, hotel Hotel costs are high, transportation costs are high, so that can add up. The benefit of having a pre PWC is obviously it generates letters, which should increase participation.
So you're going to draw pilots that you wouldn't normally get if it wasn't a pre PWC because people are going to do, like I said, they're going to look at the pre PWC list and say, Hey, that looks like a cool place to fly. I've always wanted to go to Red Rocks, and I might be able to get a letter, so I think I'm going to sign up for that.
Hmm. Okay. We missed anything here? This is a really good, I mean, that's, I think that's, we've hit a lot there, but there, we've got civil, FAI, USPA, NAA, you know, FAI is kind of the overriding umbrella. umbrella. We've got cat one, cat two, got the letters. We've got the, each country's ranking system and how we get in. And I, I didn't know that's interesting. I mean, really when it comes down to it, you know, the higher level world cups, yeah, you're going to need both, but at the lower level, you just need one letter. Ah, I know what I need to ask you because letters last forever.
No, no, no. It's good. That's a good point too. Yeah. So that would be nice. Actually,
So, no, the only letter that lasts forever is if you win a Superfinal, you get a permanent AA.
You get a
permanent AA? I just thought you got permanently into the Superfinal, but that's just, you're locked in, huh?
Yeah, permanent AA. Wow. That's cool. Yeah. What'd be nice if you won more than one Superfinal, if you could give them away to your friends so that people like Onoran could give his away or something. thing there. You go, yeah, you're having a... yeah, he's got something he doesn't need. Um, but yeah, so, so after, after the current year, uh, you can, you can use a letter from the previous year, but it's devalued by two. So, if you had a B this year, uh, and then your results for 2023 were just crap, uh, you could, you could take the B and devalue it to a D, and you can keep that. After that, it... It doesn't devalue anymore. So you can only keep that devalued letter one year.
And if the letter came from a PWC event, it's only devalued by one. So if you got a C from a Paralympic World Cup event, it would just devalue to a D, whereas your national ranking or your league score would devalue by two.
Wildcards. That's what I was going to ask you. How does that work? So
each PWC partner gets one wildcard per year. And so, you know, typically they give those wildcards to factory pilots.
A lot of times it'll be a factory pilot who's got a prototype they want to try out. We don't call them prototypes anymore. But each manufacturer can fly a ready-for-certification wing in a PWC competition. So they send in all the paperwork. They say, you know, here, this, this wing is ready for certification. Uh, we just need to test it out in real, real world conditions. And, uh, if, if they have a pilot, if they don't have a pilot who's qualified to fly it in that event, they can use their wild card to get that, to get that pilot in. Um, the partners, there's a bunch of PWC partners that aren't equipment manufacturers. And so they allocate their wildcards however they feel like doing it.
The other way you can get a wildcard is from an organizer. So an organizer gets a handful of wildcards that they can allocate. And typically they allocate them to people who have helped sponsor them. So like, for example, if there's a competition in Brazil and the local phone company is a sponsor or something like that, They might, they might give the the wild card to somebody who helped kind of make that happen, or whatever, but organizers can, can use whatever criteria they want. It's up to them, yeah, to give those out, yeah, yeah.
Okay, uh, okay. Wild cards, I almost would... I was gonna say, you know, when I first got into the game, what I learned too was it often looks pretty desperate. You're not going to get in, and then you get in. You know, if you're... if you're okay with kind of last-minute travel, a lot of people tend to cancel late, and they just keep going down that list, and... and you know, you just keep an eye on that list, and sometimes you get the call, yeah.
unfortunately, I don't... this is actually, I don't, I'm not really crazy about the way it works, but like typically what people do now is they just, at the beginning of the year, they just sign up for all the Pdbc events, regardless of whether they have any intention of going or not. And then when selection happens, they get selected. You get notified by the PBC, hey, you've been selected. You have seven days to let us know whether you can attend. And then they look at their calendar and they might realize, oh, I can't attend this anyway. And so then they'll decline, and that'll just keep happening until the competition's filled up. So you're right. A lot of times, a lot of people will have signed up at the beginning of the year.
Since then, they've gotten a conflict, and so they'll decline, or they'll cancel. You know, they said yes initially, but then something happened and they decided to cancel. So there's quite a bit of that. So, yeah, don't lose hope. I mean, if you sign up for an event, you know, don't lose hope until the last minute. And you're right. If you're the kind of person that can be flexible and can, you know, go at the relatively last minute, like, you know, with a week or two weeks notice, you might get in. in.
Bill, this one's important. How do we tell the PWC that we need a letter? What am I trying to say? You have to declare your results. And I think a lot of people don't understand that.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's a good point. We should have done that. So the first thing that you should do if you're interested in PwCs is go to the website and create an account. And so, it doesn't cost anything to create the account. You, you know, enter in your your pilot info and and things like that, and once you have created an account, you can now sign up for competitions and declare your results. So it's, it's just a screen that you go to and you say, "Okay, I want to declare results," and you get a drop-down list and you would say, "I want to declare my result from the U.S. Nationals. I want to declare my result from the U.S." League and any other things that every single thing that could possibly generate a letter is given to you as a choice for declaring results.
And then you just say, I was, you know, whatever, fifth, 10th, 15th in the U.S. Nationals. And that then goes to Laura at the PBC. She validates it. So like for the U.S., I send in the results every year of our our national championship and our, and our league and, and every country has someone like me who does that same thing. So you may sign up and say, I was fifth and Laura might come back and say, well, actually you were fourth because she's, she's got the results. And so she validates that you've signed up with the right, with the right, with the right ranking. So yeah, once you sign up for the events, then then you're on the list on the selection list. So if you go to the page for Brazil, for example,
one of the tabs is selection, and you can go and you can see the selection list. You can see all of the people who are signed up and whether they've been confirmed or whether they're in the waiting list, and you can see where their letters are. So you can kind of figure out what the odds are. You can look and say, okay, well, there's 70 people that are already confirmed, and I'm 20 down the list. You're probably going to get selected. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Bill, you mentioned the Asian tour. I don't know much about it. Talk about that a little bit. Yeah,
so the Asian tour was set up really to help foster growth in the Asian countries and give the Asian pilots opportunities to get letters. There's a lot of really, really good pilots in Asia, and it's hard for them to get over to Europe and sometimes even the U.S. to do events. And so the Asian Tour was set up. Jin of Jin Gliders, he was really instrumental in setting it up. And so it's really just another set of PWC events, except that they're in Asia. So Asian Tour events are also a really good way to get letters. They're a little bit different than the regular PWC events. So in the regular PWC event, the top 15 pilots will automatically get selected for the Superfinal.
And then depending upon how many duplications there are between PWC events, it might go down to the top 20 or top 25 pilots getting selected for the Superfinal. So the Asian Tour, just the top pilot from an Asian Tour event gets automatically selected for the Superfinal. But you get really good letters from Asian tour events and, and a selection might even, might even go deeper in the future for Asian tour events. So Asian tour events are super fun and, you know, they're, they're, they're a good way to, especially for US pilots, it's relatively easy for us to get to most of the Asian tour events as compared to somebody in Europe, for example.
Yeah. And I've heard awesome stories. I haven't gone to any of them, but I've heard awesome stories about just the cultural experiences and the organizations and the stoke. And it sounds like a must do. It sounds terrific. terrific it
really is fantastic, yeah. I mean, the Asian countries really roll out the red carpet. I mean, you feel like a VIP. They have like insane opening and clothing ceremonies, you know? They'll bring in like, like local rock stars. It's just, it's, it's pretty nuts. That's awesome. It's a lot of fun. That's awesome, yeah, yeah.
Very cool. I wanted to ask you, so yeah, that's something we didn't touch on either: is the Superfinal selection? So there's five World Cups you said, if you're top 15, you're automatically in, does that change? You know, as if it's the Macedonia world cup versus, uh, you know, Argentina, you know, if the, if the pilot quality is, is much higher at one, does it, does, do they go deeper in that one or is it just straight across the board? Okay. Top, take top 15, get rid of the, you know, the do overs and then we go to 16 and then on down the line.
So automatic qualification is top 15 overall and top three women. And the only thing that'll, take that number down is the validity of the comp. So as long as the
competition has at least two fully valid days or three or four days that add up to 2,000 points, it'll be fully valid. Below that and it could drop off. So you could get just the top 10 pilots or just the top 5 pilots if you only get one task for example in a PWC. So that doesn't happen very often, but it could happen. And like I said, so you get like the top 15 from each and the top three women from each event. And typically you've got a lot of duplications within that. So, you know, somebody will be in the top 15 of two comps or three comps. And so all of those extra slots are then allocated based on the quality of the events.
But as long as it's fully valid, they're all equal quality.
Bill, super helpful. I really appreciate it. I think this is going to be helpful to our listeners and see you in Brazil, dude. Yeah, happy to help. See you there.
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