Thursday, June 20
    The morning is pleasantly cool and, for Camp Johson, surprisingly quiet. A mild West wind is blowing and the mist starts dissipating before seven. Several empty bottles of Moldavian Port, 1988 lie between the tents of Milan Masařík, Karel "Charlie" Vejchodský, Radek "Kuzma" Boček and party, from Brno. The bottles were emptied last night while sitting around a candle instead of a bonfire.




    The first trio of army trucks leaves the stadium before nine, almost half empty, as everyone is evidently sleeping in. The second transport up is overfilled, as a hand, a leg, or a whole person hangs off the bed.




    Even though the weather probe on Kobala reported 6-10m/s winds from the east, the wind on the starting ground before noon is much weaker than it was yesterday. The discipline announced has four turning points and a distance of 83 km and its start and goal point is the church in the village of Drežnica. The organizer's office, including the computers, is moving in the morning to Drežnice and simultaneously a part is planned in the evening at the restaurant by the landing field. Another good reason to make it to the goal.







    "They always taught me to start right away, as soon as its possible to stay in the air, that way you can't miss the decisive riser", says German racer Norman Lausch, second in the overall placing of the race and to confirm his words, gets up first to the start when the window opens. It's difficult to say if at that moment he has an inkling that after two hours of flight, he'll come in first at the goal today.

    Ondra Dupal on the other hand gets to the start at 13:00. The decisive moment today is the flight over the starting point in Drežnice, and the best time for that is exactly at 13:46. It is at that moment that the same time starts running for all pilots.

    The conditions look great today and the bases are lifting to 2300 meters above sea level. The thermals are working reliably, which can be seen in the somersaults of some pilots right at the starting ground. One, innocent looking turn of a Russian pilot ends unfortunately, in a broken left hand.



    The advance of the racers along the route is unusually fast today. The bells of the church tower in Drežnice are just only beginning to ring 4 O'clock and Norman Lausch, Jurij Vidic and Suša Primož are turning winning spirals over the landing ground. Barely a few minutes after them, the lead group of the other racers fly in and things get thick on the relatively small landing ground behind the church.



    Evidently no one wants to miss out on the party tonight and so, in the end, a total of 89 racers, among them 23 Czechs, land at the goal of today's discipline The time differences among the favorites are minimal, however, so that in the overall placing no major changes take place in the leading positions.

    "You don't have to know how to fly fast, just don't be dumb", states Radek "Kuzma" Boček while consuming goulash and good wine. Bad luck has taken its toll on the Czech team today. Mirek "Radar" Stěhula, while switching his GPS to a longer interval pattern on the 40^th kilometer, in order to save memory, inadvertently sets an even 90 hours, thanks to his gloved fingers. And because he cannot stay in the air that long, from that moment onwards, the instrument does not register a single point. Petr Kuhn, just to be sure, has completely turned off his route recording from the start and Milan Masařík end up on a spare chute somewhere high in the mountains, where following a two-hour hike he found a good fairy in a mountain cottage, that not only fed him gave him something to drink, but actually drove him all the way to Tolmin in her car. And beginning tomorrow, Petr Kostrhun will be missing at the start, as he injured his leg during landing near the second turning point.