Hi there, everybody. Welcome to another episode of the Cloudbase Mayhem. Before we get into the show here with Brett Chanaway and the SRS Racing Series, which he started, I just wanted to quickly remind everybody, if you haven't seen it, that I am now a Niviuk dealer. And over the last few months, I've been putting together a team. We've got two tiers, factory pilots and ambassadors. And factory pilots are chosen via their world ranking or NTSS ranking or what they're doing in the hike and fly scene. Team members can be acro pilots or hike and fly pilots or race to goal, whatever. It all works. But basically, we're trying to put together folks who are really stoked on flying and making waves and spending time, a lot of time in the air.
And if that sounds like you, we would love to get you on the team. So it's a North American team flying Niviuk gear, all colors and stripes, and just having a good time and sharing knowledge and working together to go out there and do fun projects, whether that's bivvy or racing or what have you. So if you're interested and want to get on the team or you're interested in what it's all about, just reach out to me. Send me an email and I'll tell you. I'll tell you all about it. We'd love to have more people join. All right. My guest today is Brett Janoway. He and I have been friends for a long time. Brett started Air Tribune ages and ages ago, which is a platform many of us who organize comps use to keep everything organized and handle registration and results and all that kind of thing.
And then, yeah, a few years back, Brett has been pushing against this idea of starting a sports class. He's been on the S-R-S series, which he ended up doing with the help of a few others. And it has been a huge success. And they're having a lot of fun with it. So I wanted to reach out to Brett and find out about the genesis of this whole thing and what was the catalyst. Why have they done it? What need is it filled? What can you learn by going to race in this? And just all that comes together. It's hard putting these comps together, I know, because I do it myself. And it's just been really fun to see the kind of stratospheric rise of the S-R-S series and really see the niche that it's in. It has filled. And I know a lot of my team pilots are super excited and out there right now doing it. So this is Everything S-R-S with Brett Chanaway.
Enjoy.
Brett, welcome to the mayhem. It's taken us, what, five years? That's a bit of an exaggeration. But, boy, it has taken a while. But it's good to see your smiling face. It does
feel like that. Yeah. Yeah, it's been forever. As you say, you've been trying to get me. I've been just… Out of it. It's been absolutely nonstop for the last few years now. I just can't find a breather.
Yeah. I mean, you've been super busy, of course, with Air Tribune, which is your baby, for a long time. And then you've added this. And you'll have to tell me the genesis of all this. But is it just you? How does the… What is it? Why did you do it? Tell us about the S-R-S series because it's kind of taken the world by storm.
Yeah. I think the S-R-S, it's… It's a fairly new thing, was it? It's fourth season now. But for me, it's kind of been there forever in the background, just building up to it. So, I mean, if you go back right to the start of things, I guess it was the late 90s that I was doing some local club competitions in the UK where I spent my time then.
And my mentor there, if you like, he was an organiser of a winter competition where we can't really do a great deal. And he'd get… A hundred pilots out, easy. And the basis of it was just fun. It wasn't really about the competition. There's a little tiny element in there where people want to win. But at the end of it all, it just finishes with a hundred prizes on the table and everybody gets a prize. The winner gets to choose the best on the table and the last person gets to choose whatever's left, which often was quite a reasonable prize. That's fun. And yeah, everyone in between got something. And that's been the catalyst, if you like, for… Yeah. …how I've organised ever since. So I have been organising for, I don't know, was it 2002 was the first proper one I organised myself.
So 24 years ago now. Really? Wow. And I've just been building on that. So in 2002, that was an accuracy competition at that time. I used to do a bit of that in the UK. cross country didn't hit me until about 2006, I think, was the first serious competition I went to. And then… And then in mainstream organising, it would have been the Gin Wide Open in 2013. So we based it all around… Was it Sports Wings, the first one? I think we did have some Open Wings. I can't remember now. But it was certainly themed on fun, on learning, but every time always wraps up in proper FAI competing so that they learnt the proper rules, the proper process during the fun.
And yeah, it's just gone on. So the SRS in particular, that one was again wrapped up around 2013, the concepts of 13 years ago. That was where, I don't know if you remember the names, but we, Gajsa Prejic, a good Slovene pilot who was leading the world for, I think, 18 months or something, world number one in the WPS. And Nicole Fidel, she was Women's World Champion a few times and Superfinal Champion for the women. And both of them spoke to me separately about linking competitions together that they were organising. At the time, though, we had some good discussions and we just felt that it was not going to be that healthy for the sport.
We'd just come out of the Open class bands and it's just heading towards the CCC taking over. And for those that know their history, they know that the E &D class, which became the new… The competition wing, that is supposed to have been a cross country leisure wing, a high-end, but a leisure wing. And when the competition scene had to adopt it because Open class wings were banned, the manufacturers just chased performance and it destroyed the class for a while. And so we were just scared, really, that that would happen in these competitions if we launched a sports class competition or series, that the manufacturers might take it too seriously and destroy…
What is the leisure wing? The E &C is the leisure wing of the sport. And so we just held off. But was it four years ago? That's when the two-liner E &C was created. And if you like, it was allowed by the certification bodies because it's all about the folding lines and what you could get past. But it also gave natural barriers to manufacturers on what they can do in designing a wing. So it protected the class a great deal. So, yeah, that was when the SRS was finally put together and launched.
What do you mean by linking competitions together, kind of making a series?
Yeah, so competitions generally, by most people, they just run as a one-off. You know, the club organizes it or some individual organizes it, and they run one a year, much as you do with your own events. That's how the Gin Wide Open had been run, as I was running it then, or the Navator Opens I then took on later. But for this… We wanted to link, we're aiming for five a year. We're aiming for them to be outside Europe as well as in, just a bit more global. And you can fly them as a standalone competition. Just come along, do one, enjoy the week, and that's done. Or you can put those results effectively into the season, and you can fly two, three, or five of them, and try to be the champion for the season by linking them.
If you fly…
They're all standalones, but…
To be the champion, is it cumulative of however many you do, or do you get a drop, or how do you score that?
So that's where the SRS gets quite complicated. It's got so many layers to the SRS that people don't appreciate initially. But what we're doing for linking the events, we set it, so we use the FTV formula. So FTV in competitions. It's usually to drop your… Your worst task, in the essence. And a typical competition, you get rid of one task. What we do is we use that, and we multiply it. We take it right up to about 65 % on the FTV, so that if we have five competitions in a year, accounting for weather as well, we probably get about 25 valid tasks in a year. And the idea is that you only have to do 10 tasks in the season.
So the 65 % means if you come to two competitions… With normal weather, so you get 10 tasks. The fact you don't go to the other competitions, the FTV removes your non-scores at them.
Oh, cool. So
everybody at the end of the year has their 10 best. If you happen to go to all five, well, in a sense, you're buying yourself a better position, because you can just have more bad tasks during the year and still look for your best 10. But it is possible to be the champion by just doing two competitions, as some of our infamous pilots have done. I mean, we've got Powell Tackett. Yeah. He did quite a lot of them, but he could have probably won with two. Dylan Mansley, he's, what was he, ranked about 10th in the world or something. He did just two events and finished second or third on the season. So it really does work as a formula.
And you're getting, I'm assuming, WPRS points, and what about that side of things?
Yeah, everything's standard CAT2, so yeah, every competition's got its WPRS points. It's actually an aspect that's gone a bit… It's gone a bit crazy, in a sense. When we started off, we were getting leisure sports pilots in the mainstream. So the points that have been awarded were 30, 40 points on the first ones, which is about the same as most sports competitions will offer. But these days, we're hitting in the mid-70s, so it's about 77 points or something for the next event. Oh, wow. That's monarchical. That's higher than most national events we get. Yeah, yeah. It's super high level. Yeah, wow. And every event's broken a record at the last event. Really?
A lot of high class. It's self-feeding, because we've got good pilots in, and then they keep coming, and as their rankings get better, that boosts the whole system. But then we do have those high-level pilots joining us at times as well, which just feed on into it.
What do you think is the special sauce here? Why is it so popular?
Is it just a much different vibe than, say, a World Cup or a Nationals event? Is it much more relaxed? Because it sounds like, from what you told me, it's gotten so popular that it can be kind of hard to get in. It sounds quite competitive.
It's hard to get in, that's for sure. We're closing registration when we've got more than 450 pilots registered now, which is just mad. That's crazy. We're getting wildcard applications. That's crazy. That's crazy. You've been able to apply for a wildcard if you didn't qualify. We, at the last event, had 45 wildcard applications. That's just for the people that refused and they're desperate to get in. It's just mad there. But yeah, what is the formula? I don't know. I think working behind it is that experience over the years on running so many competitions on what people want and what works and what brings them back. So definitely there's that background to it. But from the pilot's perspective, though, I think it is just that the vibe is better.
It's national competitions are always so serious. And so you get into PWC level, it just feels like there's so much at stake that you've got to focus, you've got to fly, you've got to be on the hot wing. And so the SRS is just far more relaxed. But I think bringing with it the wings, the wings are just not quite so full on. The performance isn't far behind. But yeah. Because you're relaxed in the air, the pilots have this good vibe on the ground. It's just not too serious yet. Actually, that's the wrong term. It is serious. It's super serious. The money that's involved in the manufacturers, the point chasing, it's all super serious. But it's still, I don't know, if you mix it up from the pilot's perspective, it's just not that mad.
It's just enjoy the vibe, enjoy the day, fly with your heroes.
Yeah. Because there's lots of heroes that are stepping down to the sport class wings like Powell and Dylan. And that's super fun for the other participants, I imagine.
Yeah. Yeah. And we've got new heroes coming up through it as well. I mean, the people that are just maturing out of this, presumably several of them will go on to PWC levels or that type of thing from this. So they're moving both ways, down through it and up through it as well.
Is there a real training aspect to it? In other words, is there lots of mentors? Is there a lot of mentoring and coaching and instruction that's happening on a daily basis? Are you analyzing track logs? Are you? Or no? Okay. So it's like a standard comp, but.
No, it's a pure racing series. Occasionally, some events we have at that, we've had a day off or something and we've got some good names there. I mean, I remember Jocky Sanderson, one of our early ones, he was doing talks all week long. So it's not that we don't have them, but it's not the focus of the event. It's not the
focus. Okay. Okay. And then is it always your team? Running it in these different locations or is it local organizers and you're the overhead or something?
Yeah, that's, we take a lot of lessons from PWC as well on how they do things. And for me, one of the big successes of the PWC was the fact they brought in their own scorer and their own safety people and tracking people. It just maintains that standard throughout everything that's important. So yeah, we've got a team about five people. In the core that will attend all the events and just keep those standards, but things like, you know, the local barbecue party or the local trophies, that's important. That's, that's why we go to these places and let the local team run the events and we just do the core boring admin stuff in the background, if you like. And
you said five, I mean, given the level of demand, does that, you anticipate that growing? I know, you know, for example, my event. This fall is, is kind of combo. It's unusual. It's, we've got the open, which is CCC class and down, and then we've, we're going to do the SRS test event. Am I saying that right? Is it a test event? Is that what you're calling it?
To be pretty, if you test event or qualify, we did qualify this time. So yeah, so we're going to the first question is enough. I mean, I think on our side, it's, it's not enough people. The workload is horrendous in the background, really. There is enough longer term to, to do what we need to do because the local venues will supply, you know, as big a team as they need 10, 20, even people sometimes you see these events. So there's always a big team in the background, but the SRS it's enough for sure. So you'll keep it, you'll keep it. We just touched on there.
Well, it's, we're putting over, we're putting in place all the events. We've got, well, Ori Jessup, he's the one that's all for our, after our scoring and database system. So he, he loves competing in them, you know, but he's always there on tap every evening, keeping that working. We've got Ruth, who's doing all our commentary for us online. So you just go to any of our, or go to the SRS.live app during any event. And she's posting photos and commentary. And even if it's your grandmother, who's never seen a competition before, Ruth keeps them informed and keeps the basic information going out so you can follow the race. Yeah. Lisa Davis, she's from the US, she's comes along and does a lot of us, which is all of our scoring. So she keeps that level in there.
And Magdalena, she's my wife. She goes along, she's been flying a lot in the past years, but she's stepping back now and she wants to look after the safety side and make sure the tracking is working properly and looking after the pilots best we can there. And then we got a few others that just turn up at the events quite regularly. So yeah, there's a lot of people on our side.
Yeah. I
know you mentioned, we were confused on a minute ago on the test and qualifier and that. So it's probably good to explain that since it's a bit of a new thing this year. In the past, again, looking at the PWC lessons, they always run pre-PwCs. So their test event.
We avoided that initially because we didn't want it to just be a way of making money. And it sometimes felt as a little bit. We're like that with the PWC, you know, they'll have 10, 15 pre-events a year, but they only really get a new one now and again.
But from our experiences in the first few years, we found we were going to some venues and the venue wasn't ready. We expect the SRS to be a level above an average CAT2. And sometimes you're turning up at venues and, oh, maybe we sort of anticipated that problem, but how would we? We haven't seen the venue before. So we've got pre-SRSs this year and the statement is, though, that if it's a pre-SRS, we do intend to return there in a year or two and run a proper SRS. But to avoid that problem of it being a bunny smitter or whatever other reasons that can be, we introduced the SRS qualifier.
So it means we believe in this event. We think it's well organized and it should meet the criteria. We'd like as an event, but we're not necessarily intending to go in there next year. And it's just a way of those pilots qualifying to get into the SRS system. And that's the difficulty really is how does a pilot get
into the SRS? It's
not that easy. That's
like the World Cup conundrum. I mean, which is easier now, but yeah, for a long time, it's, you know, it's tricky getting letters and the whole
thing. Yeah, well, exactly.
Yeah. So the PWC uses letters. We went for numbers just to... To avoid a confusion in the score. So the SRS score, but the SRS score, like the PWC, it's based on your single best results of the previous two seasons. And so we just take your WPS score and we multiply it up just to give us a decent number. But the difference is, well, if you must fly it on a PWC wing, so you just go to any open event, it's got ENZOs, it's got photons. It's got whatever wings in it, but you won't get an SRS score unless it is on that C-class wing. So if you fly it on your ENZO, your score is zero. If you get 20 WPS points on your sports wing, you'll get an SRS score of 200, which is multiplied by 10.
Oh, okay.
But then the bit that makes... It's easy. But the bit that makes it difficult for the outsiders from the SRS is if it's an SRS event, we multiply it by 15. Oh. It's a business model, if you like, for the first year where it's a bit insidious, but we're trying to promote, come to our events, don't disappear off to other events. And that's part of how we've been too successful. So given the SRS qualifiers, it'll give that times 15 as well. Oh,
so it's the same.
It allows the outsiders to get in. It's a qualifier, you're
getting the same
points. It's the same. Oh,
cool. Okay. Exactly.
So that's how you can get some of your guys, local guys, into the SRS system and take part. And at some point... We'll balance it all out. We'll level it all off. And then it'll be much easier. And
is this now your living? Is this your job? Is this what you're doing?
Oh, I wish. Oh, okay. I do work full-time. I'm full-time running comps. But the SRS, it's important to know it's a non-profit. It's a proper registered company, but registered in the sports category. But it's got no shareholders. I cannot touch one cent of the profits. None of us in the team touch the profits. Exactly the same as the PWC. Okay. So that was important. I obviously don't do it for free. I take wages. Sure. And everybody does with the team. My wages on the SRS, I earn more out of running a single private event than I do the whole season of the SRS at the moment. Ah, okay. That'll change. But the whole point of the SRS is just to give what I enjoy doing to the sport, really.
And set some good goals. And foundations for the future in sports.
I'm glad you've got Ruth doing your play-by-play. That is something that is sorely missing from World Cups since she left. I'm glad you were able to rip her out of there and do her thing. Because that's so fun. And it was so – I mean, I loved it. And people like my mom, who have no idea what's going on in paragliding racing, loved it. It's just – it's really missing from – and I have knocked on that door a lot. In the last couple of years, since we lost Ruth at the PWC, it's really missing. And there's something about that that's very special compared to an Instagram post with some pictures. I don't know. I just – I loved that blog. It was a blast. That's really fun.
Yeah. I ask the difficulty of having a sport, though. There's no money in the sport at all, really. It's how do you get some of that quality without the money to pay them? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
It's because we do it for the passion, not for the money. So, yeah, Ruth is absolutely passionate, and she's willing to do it for her expenses of travel and, you know, not a lot else. Oh,
good for her. That's great. Well, I know Ulrich gets to race, so, you know, so they're having fun with it, I'm sure.
They're having a blast, yeah. And Ulrich is just ecstatic that he can keep his scoring softwares and systems going whilst being able to race. And who knew he'd be so bloody good? Who
knew he'd be so bloody good?
He's an amazing fighter. Oh, people forget. I mean, the guy – He kept it on the ground all those years. He competed in the X-Hubs, you know. I
mean, people, we forget these things. He's got some history. So, with everybody on the, you know, the two-liner Cs, I'm assuming people are on the Arctic R and the Photon and, you know, whatever advances is. I don't pay attention enough to the E &C wings. But anything to say about that? Is that a great thing? Is that a scary thing? Is it – I don't know. I'm not very familiar with these wings. So, you know, I race the hot stuff. So, I – Well,
the average sports wing these days are just stunning. I mean, my racing, I don't fly much during the year, but I do a lot of racing in Colombia in the winter in particular. You fly these 100K tasks at Roldanillo. You've got all the Enzos in there on the open class. And you get to gold. The winner gets to gold. And five, six, seven minutes later, the first sports wings are coming in. Three, four years ago, that was an hour gap. And we're down to minute gaps now. So, the wings are stunning wings these days. Cool. So, putting that into what we're doing, I guess the problem we've had to deal with with the SRS in particular lately is I was always confident it'd be successful. But it's been too successful.
And it is changing the sport now, which I did not anticipate when we started. I mean, it was always my worry, but it really has changed the sport. And so, from that, we've had to start now – well, we started putting limitations on sports wings straight away. I was in touch with our – well, our partners, we formed them. We did Ozone, Skywatch, and BGD as the main four. And we formed a WhatsApp group on day one. And it's just like, how can we stop this going crazy? So, rules like the speed limiter, the tape between A and B. That was insisted on from the start because probably about a third of the sports wings on the market don't have it. Usually from manufacturers that didn't make CCC wings.
They don't realize the importance of it. These days, that's moved on to, well, limiting aspect ratios. We had that rule. It was due to come in next year anyway. But fortunately, CIVL has recognized this as well with us. And we've now just launched the – Plenary a week or so ago, the new CCC class. So, it's putting together – we spent a lot of months researching every sports wing that's been competing in the last three or four years. Then looking at the attributes of them and how can we form that into rules to keep them as they are now, just to preserve the nature of them as they are. Not limiting manufacturers' design abilities, just things like – well, we – We settled in the end on a 6.8 aspect ratio because the highest aspect we have in sports is 6.9.
So, we just tripped off a tiny bit. Number of cells, 70, 71 is the extremes at the moment. So, we've gone for 67 cells, which will just help a lot with stopping projected aspect ratios going crazy. And then a few other rules around that. Speed limit is obviously mandatory. We've added a weight limit even. Every single wing that's in them. Every single wing that's in the market passes it at the moment, but we don't want wings to get too heavy. So, all of that's been wrapped up. CIBL has launched that as their rules for Category 1 for World Championships in the future. And then the SRS, which I think we'll be rubber stamping it next week, will adopt it as well and enforce that probably from next year. So, hopefully, that will stop the craziness we had back in 2012, was it, when the E &D became the racing wing?
Yeah, cereal. What else is happening in that world that is of interest to those listening? With the plenary and civil, it's been a bit of a hot rock since the accident at the Worlds, at the World Championships down in Brazil.
There's been a lot of social media fire flying around. And I know I'm part of that base camp group that you are. And I see your comments all the time. And I've just been a witness. I don't like to stab into that very much, but I've just been seeing it all. There's a lot there. There's a ton. Are there a couple subjects that you feel we should hit on here?
Yeah, it was the busiest or the most proposal I've ever seen in a plenary that we had to go through this year. So, it was quite a long trip getting to the thing. As you say, it kicked off from Brazil. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. Sport this year since the biggest changes since about 2012 on the new rules.
The headline ones you'll see are all the changes to the ballast limits and things, how much weight you can carry.
That one, I think, is a difficult one, but it had to come in because, I mean, if my wife, she's carrying 22 litres of lead and water to try and be competitive on her CCC wing. But it's not that she wants to. In fact, it was so much she pulled out halfway through the world because she couldn't cope with it. But that's the pressure on pilots. And so, for safety, I think the limits had to come back and safety, sporting this, it's very hard to balance the two or fairness to balance all those things are super difficult and a political decisions had to be made. It was very well supported that one. But the other change is it will work. It will be coming.
The performance limiters or the noodles, as people like to call them, they were not approved this year, but I believe they will be here next year. The main reason the delegates didn't vote for this year is because we haven't tested them. So how can we possibly put them into a cat one until they're tested? But the test event is a month away. So I think we'll see them next year in the sport. Again. There's a. There's a whole bunch of people who like the idea and those that don't. But mixed with the weight limits, it should be healthy. We'll see. Let
me push back a little bit. Just be the antagonist for a second here, because I just yesterday had a did a podcast with Violetta, who, you know, is as was a part of the pilots union that was started with Julian, who then I think dropped out. But, you know, there was, you know, I'll just take myself as an example. I voted to institute the ballast limits, which, you know, you know, the history of this. We had these in place back in, you know, not too long ago and everybody hated it. But I voted because I thought same thing. You know, Magdalene is a perfect example here. You know, that's just it's a ridiculous amount of weight to carry. It is unsafe. We don't necessarily have the data. This is always the thing is we don't collect data very well in this sport.
So we don't have that. You know, a lot of these things, you know, like the conical end of speed. There's so many things that were being discussed. And I see you, you know, chiming in on that all the time. And, you know, we just a lot of its opinions. Right. This must be more dangerous, but we don't really have the data to back it up. Now, ballast, of course, again, I don't think we have the data to back it up, but it's it just it makes sense. You know, small people carrying a ton of weight. But to me, I thought it was the vote was coupled with the noodles. You know, to me, if if we institute the noodles and those who are listening, what the noodles are is, you know, these are kind of like think of pool noodles. They're much smaller and in diameter than that. They go around your bees. They're pretty easy to install. We were going to try them for a data day at the World Cup this year in X-ray.
But the weather was crap. We couldn't do it. But again, we don't really have the data. But this is Luc Armant initiative. And what it does is it creates more drag. So people flying. Much bigger wings. It's just basic physics. They go better than smaller wings. And so this is why people who want to be competitive on who are lighter have to ballast up, fly bigger wings because the smaller wings, it's a double whammy. They don't fly as well and they don't fly as fast. And so they're they're they're more of a handle. They're more of something to hold on to. And they don't they don't go as well. So to be competitive, you've got to be you got to fly bigger wings. So if you're small, you got to ballast up to get there. The noodles, in theory, would remove that in a sense, because, you know, if you're big, you're flying a bigger wing.
You carry more drag. You know, you just you induce more drag with these noodles. And so smaller weight people can then fly. They don't have to ballast up. It'll it'll equalize. They're called equalizers. And, you know, in theory, it'll equalize the whole group. So so I voted to. OK, let's put in these ballast limits. But I thought it was coupled with the with the equalizers. You know, to me, what we've done is well, what Violetta would argue. And I tend to agree is that what we've done is, yes, we've done something that eliminates the ballast issue. But we've also eliminated all these people from being able to compete, you know, because you're a comp wing these days.
And, you know, a harness, you know, a sub with two reserves. You know, you're already up there. You're already up around twenty five kg. So you've got about now with the with the ballast limits, you've got about eight kgs of cushion, which basically, you know, anybody who's small is going to have to fly an extra small or at best a small wing. And then which aren't really competitive. So to me, the vote has made it that we've just eliminated people who want to race that are small. They can't they can't be competitive. And so we've taken safety and we've gone, hey, something needs to be done. But to me, it needed to be done in tandem with the equalizers. Well, what what's your opinion?
Well, I'll start the difficulty with doing this fairness, competitiveness and safety. And I think with the accidents we've been seeing and there are several high level ones with ballast, I think we just had to take the stance of safety on that one. Yeah, it would have been nice to couple it straight away with the limited. But maybe we have actually because it certainly in terms of talking with cat ones, the next cat one that's affected by the ballast limits is next year, not this year. And that's plenty of time to introduce the the balance limiters. So the test event next month, the bureau could introduce them straight away afterwards. Or we just introduce them at an ex plenary and it still arrives at cat one at the same time. OK, so
there's time.
So it's
recommended for cat's time, correct? Yeah. Yeah. How does that work?
It's recommended, but I believe the PWC has already said they're going to sit back and watch. Yeah. And see how it develops. And if they don't adopt them, who else is going to adopt them?
Yeah. Fair enough. I mean, I run a cat two in September and I won't adopt them, you know. So, yeah, fair enough. Yeah, exactly. So in a sense we need to maybe relax a little bit because it's going to be a while. Hopefully there's time. It's not the end of small people cat one. I think that's the urgency over here is, well, sweet. You just eliminated me from being able to compete.
Yeah. And I think we also have to consider the new title that was put into place. Well, nobody's discussing, everyone's missing. There has now been created a lightweight world champion. The 95 kilo pilot can now be a world champion. And that's more than just a token thing that's been offered. We know the smaller wings are more difficult to handle because there's no real effort put into them by the manufacturers. Yeah. Now the manufacturers can chase a world title. Now they have an incentive to make the small wing better. And then there's borderline pilots.
Ono, I bet, would fit onto a 95 kilo wing if he wanted to.
Maxime would, for
sure. Yeah. When they start opening up that incentive, maybe then they're going to go for it. Interesting. Yeah. I think there is some good stuff in there people haven't taken into account.
Yeah. Okay. And I think, as always, it's also a communications issue. Yeah. This is the thing. Yeah. Social media is not very kind to all of our brains. That's it. There's a lot of riling going on. I know. The other
huge thing that's happened is the change on team size or nation entry size into the worlds, or into Cat 1s. So previously, 3 plus 1 is known, which is typically three men and one woman, although it could be as many women as you like within the four. And then the bigger nations tended to get more places. So the reigning world champion could be offered a place as well. And then any unfilled places would just go to high-ranked pilots. And what that meant in reality is on a Europeans, a continental event, we typically get maybe eight Frenchmen. And then the British turning up and five or six British turning up. And the smaller nations just don't have the ability to fill up more than three quite often.
And so what we've done now is limited to three plus a female. It's not a three plus one anymore. It's a three and a one, if you like. And it's going to be selected by nation ranking, not by pilot ranking, which changes things a little.
We're no longer allowing the reigning world champion an exclusive place. So it means that the French can only have four now. The British can only have four. Everyone's limited to the four. And that's assuming they have a woman to be the fourth one.
So it's total fairness in teams.
It hasn't affected the women's selection the slightest. Every woman that appeared at the last worlds can still go to the next worlds. There was 12 at the last worlds. All of them. All 12 would still get selected and still have their own title. But what it does mean is they're not necessarily scoring for the team, which again was another advantage for the big nations that had the women. 12 nations had a woman and the rest of them didn't. So that bonus opportunity has been removed and equalized across all the nations now. So yeah, big change. People will have to judge if it's a good thing or bad thing. I think for the majority of nations, it's a good thing. And some nations, like the British, it's a half full or half empty cup.
We're now equalized with the French. We've got more chance of catching up with them, but we don't have the advantage over a smaller nation that we had before. So it depends on your perspective.
But it would still be, you know, we've got this kind of unusual situation here in the States where our women's team is really strong. There's four there that are just amazing points. Yeah.
And it
was at the last Worlds. I can't remember how the selection went, but I think we had two or maybe even three women that just qualified on their own. In other words, they were ahead of our best men pilot. So it wouldn't affect that. In other words, if we had three women in the top three in the NTSS, which is our scoring system, it would be those three and then the fourth person, correct? Yeah. Okay, got you.
Yeah, correct. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's effectively, you now have a limit. Only three men can attend. Yeah. But you could have four women. Right. So
it's by ranking, but at least one. Yeah. Okay. Got you. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Back to the SRS. Before we wrap things up here, I would love to hear for those listening who have not, you know, thinking about sticking their toe in the water and haven't done it. How do they do it? How do they get a spot? How do they? How should they train? What should they be thinking about? Should they go to other comps first? You know, kind of get their, you know, understand how to work the instruments and how race to goal works. What would you recommend?
Yeah. For sure, don't try and come to the SRS as your first event. You got to know how to fly a comp a little bit first. So at the moment, just support your local competitions and do the first ones there. Look for those training events if you can find them. So I know you've got the wide open over there. We've got the NIVX here, the Ozone Sharbras. But find those events that will teach you a bit more, give you those debriefs and talks. And then as you compete, you will just naturally gain an SRS score anyway. No matter what events you're in, you'll gain some, an SRS score out of it. And then when you're ready, when you've got the level you need, which at the moment is about 20 WPS points. That's when you can try and get into the SRS.
And then the SRS will definitely accelerate your learning massively. We're not teaching you, but just being in a strong racing environment, you learn incredibly fast. So yeah, take on the basics in a local comp and then get ready for the big acceleration when you make it in.
I know a lot of my friends have been racing the last few years. You know, the kind of the PWC end of pilots, you know, Nick Greece and Bill Belcourt and these guys. Have been going to the Ozone. It's the U.S.'s version. Matty and Austin up in Chelan have had this Ozone Open. I think that's what it's called. Ozone Chelan Open, something like that. But it's just strictly sport class wings. And they just love it. When they go to this thing, they just dig it. It's so fun. And then the next week is the U.S. Open of paragliding, you know, which everybody's on their Enzos and X1s and stuff. And that's what I always go to participate in. It's a blast. But they say that it's just a different vibe. What accounts for that? Why is it?
And I mean, interestingly, too, I always think of the SRS, you know, everybody's playing basketball in a sense. They've got much more similar gear, which is kind of weird to say that because, of course, everybody's on an Enzo and a sub or an X1 and a sub. They all go very similarly. So it's not like people have a big advantage. There's not this, you know, back in the open class days, you really could have an advantage flying a prototype or something. But. You know, with the SRS, you still see the best pilots win. I mean, it's still, you know, like you said, Dylan and Powell, and you're going to see the big names at the top.
Yeah. I think the difference between wings in the SRS is actually much greater than the open class. The open class, majority of people are on the Enzo. There's the X1. There's the Boomerangs just coming back. But the performance difference between them is not that great. And the pilots are pretty much mad. They've maxed it out. You know, eight years, is it, of the ozone Enzo being out? Everybody's just learned how to use it properly. In the sports class, the difference between them is bigger, but so are the pilot skills. And that's really, it's the pilot abilities that are making the difference.
And I think that just allows so many opportunities of fun days in it. Good days and bad days in it. It's crazy. Russ Ogden. You probably got to ask Russ Ogden. What the appeal is. Because Russ has retired from Cat 1 this year. Yeah. Or end of last year. That was his last in Brazil. Not because of anything that happened in Brazil, but he just generally wanted to retire from high level racing. But the only competition I think he's got to do this, he wants to do this year is Chelan.
Yeah. He
wants to get out there and do that one. He's done it a few times. Because he just loves it. It's a magical
place to race.
And he says he will come to the SRS maybe next year. So I don't know. Ask Russ the question. Yeah. That's a good one to ask him.
I'm just
an organizer. Yeah.
That's a good one. Yeah. Yeah. You're tainted. Well, Brett, thanks, man. I really appreciate hearing about all this. We're, of course, really excited to host one of your events this fall with the Wide Open. That'll be really fun. It's going to be interesting to combine them. I don't know that that's been done. So we're really trying to make it, you know, we're going to have these two divisions. And I think it's all going to work out. But it'd be cool. I think it's going to be a lot of fun. And it'd be nice to kind of combine it and see, you know, see how that works. But congratulations for pulling this off and kind of leading the charge and creating something that people are really excited about. You know, we need that in free flight. Keep the, you know, hike and fly did that during COVID.
And everybody's jazzed about that. And so it's, yeah, kudos to you. Appreciate it.
Yeah. You're very welcome. It's been a lot of fun. Yeah. I'm sure we've been doing it for a long time yet. We'll see you in the States sometime. We'll have one over there soon.
That'd be great. I'd love it. I'd like to be the first one. So, yeah, let's keep an eye on that space. Cool. If
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