Saturday, June 22
    During the night, the front brought occasional thunder, but not a single raindrop. On the last day of the race, the sky is clear once again, visibility excellent and rumors go around about a 100km discipline.



    A relatively swift eastern wind has picked up before 10 a.m., and is rustling the tops of the trees on the starting ground of Kobala and in the distance, high over Krno the first white clouds begin to pop up. The sun is very bright, but the temperature is pleasant. Russian racer Vadim Krotov, having come to at least look on, stares off into the landscape, with his broken arm in a white cast. Petr Kostrhun cannot follow his example for the moment, as in addition to his broken leg, he has pressure fracture of a vertebrae. Landing in strong turbulence in a mountain valley in a riverbed full of boulders is no laughing matter. David Bzirský for a change is wearing a scarf around his neck as he fights with some sickness while the business duo of Marcel Konečný and Michal Orolin is gone again, for business reasons. The Czech ranks have thinned somehow over the week …



    "Even if I made some mistake today and lost the race, I wouldn't be too upset about it", says Norman Lausch, the leading racer, on the starting ground, as he loads fresh batteries into his instruments and looks forward to a long discipline.

    In light of the possibility of afternoon showers however, no long discipline is announced and the organizers set a track over four turning points at an overall length of 58km, with a goal at the stadium in Tolmin again. The discipline is then changed three minutes before the opening of the start window, by leaving out one of the turning points, resulting in a shortening of the overall route to 54 kilometers.



    Norman Lausch leaves nothing to chance and again starts off first. Immediately following him is Suša Primož and a wave of others follows directly. Two hot favorites, Vidic a Norman Lausch, leave the starting point simultaneously at 13:33 and set out on the track, whereas Norman only needs to arrive at the goal at the same time as Jurij to win.



    Even though the thermal conditions are good today, the Kuk hill on the opposite side of the valley, which is the turning point, twice, in today's discipline, is a tough nut to crack for tens of racers, including eight of ours. The whole of Kuk is, however, short for Radek Krampl, who not only elects a somewhat non-traditional route today between the turning points, but when, already by yesterday afternoon, he'd adjusted his speed system in an original way, he must've used some progressive, if not radical elements. And as was seen later, he was the first of our pilots to make it to the goal, half an hour earlier than the second of our ranks, Ondra Dupal.

    "I wanted to drag them into the shit, and in the end I stayed there myself", says Mirek Varvařovský, regarding his tactic for today, who landed at the 20^th kilometer with Radek Večeřa, and eight other racers.

    At 15:50 Suša Primož shows up first above the goal line, with a flight time eight minutes worse than the other Slovenian racer, Marko Novak, who then become the winner of today's discipline. Twenty pilots overall fly in to the goal today, among whom are the already mentioned Czech pilots, Radek Krampl, Ondřej Dupal, Karel Vrbenský, Tonda Pallas and Milan Kameníček. The latter, however, makes a turn back after flying over the goal line, so quickly that his GPS doesn't manage to record the point past the goal, resulting in a point loss for not reaching the goal.



    Of the expected duo of Norman Lausch and Jurij Vidic, Norman Lausch appears first at the goal, at 16:33, with a three minute lead on Jurij, making him the champion of the race in the overall placing. The only Czech pilots remaining in the top ten are Ondřej Dupal (6th place) and Radek Večeřa (10th place). However, in the women's category, despite all misfortune, our Martina Černá won the race. And while waiting for the final results and the evening's party, some are watching the just-starting football game. Others tackle more pragmatic issues.




    There's nothing to be added to the following photographs. Maybe only that the absolute winner was loaded from box to shoulders, which at first made him happy, only to immediately throw him into the icy Soča river, as he yells insanely, with joy. The eight-day race with eight valid disciplines flown and with this kind of weather is really something to behold only once every ten years.










    All that remains is for me is to thank the organizers for access to the internet and of course to tandem pilot, Lubomír Noga, without whose precise piloting I would not be able to take good shots from the air.