16th Para-Ski World Championships, Austria 2017

PARACHUTING

16th Para-Ski World Championships, Austria 2017 - Officially Started

Wednesday, 08 March 2017 00:13

Tuesday 7th March 2017 - 20.00 hrs.

End TL_Meeting

At the start of the Team Leaders' Meeting, which was extremely well organised and orchestrated by the Meet Director, Gernot Rittenschober, Wolfgant Hettegger welcomed everyone to Alpendorf, St. Johann, Austria and wished all a happy and successful competition. The FAI Controller, Gunter Berendt, then stated that the Jury had met with the Chief Judge and all was ready and fit to go. He also introduced his Jury (he now takes on the role of Jury President) as Mark Potapov (Russia) and Karl Keiser (Austria) and Blaz. Pavlin (Slovenia) Reserve.

Gernot Rittenschober then went through a few more introductions to the various officials that would be working to ensure the competition was a success, including Michael Loberbauer, the Organiser and Siegfried Lechner who was responsible for the Giant Slalom Races and setting the course, the many other volunteers from the Austrian Parachute Federation who were working to ensure the shuttle buses ran as well as all the other work done 'behind the scenes' happened. He also made a point that only information published on the official web sites (www.paraski2017.com and this page) or on the Notice Board in the Hotels and Competition Organisation room was official. Facebook and other social media were not 'official information sources'.

He explained that we had a total of 16 teams in all and 1 single competitor - a total of 65 competitors. The registration was now closed, the delegations as listed are the final entries. The Competition starts Officially now. There can be no changes.

There are two seperate DZs - DZ1 'Mountain' and DZ2 'Alpendorf'. DZ2 will only be used if the weather conditions make DZ1 unusable (wind etc).

The plan for tomorrow is to start with the Giant Slalom qualification run - so it is an early start in the morning - breakfast at 7.00 before heading up the mountain to "Sonntagskogel" where the race course will be open for inspection from 9.20 to 9.50, i.e the last skier must be off the course no later than 10.05. At 10.30 the Qualification Run will start. All team leaders were issued with their competitors start number vests, which must be worn at all time on the slopes.

Once the Qualification run is complete the first Accuracy load will take off - this will be 30 minutes after the last skier has finished. We will then do two rounds of accuracy before leaving the mountain to prepare for the Opening Ceremony at 17.45 in St. Johann City Centre, complete with Country Flags, Name Carriers and a Marching Band. At approximately 20.00 hrs we will be entertained with a Welcome Dinner and a 'cultural evening at Oberforsthofalm'.

Before leaving for the Opening Ceremony there will be a further Team Leader meeting to distribute the Ski Start Numbers for Thursday and the first of the actual races. We will then have a better idea of the weather forecast and can then plan the schedule for Thursday.

He was asked if the GS Course had been inspected by FISC, to be told by those responsible that it would be before 9.30 tomorrow morning (it seems the official involved is local). Gunter also pointed out that should there be a protest about the Giant Slalom the Jury would be made up of Gunter and the two other Jury members plus the 4 Skiing officials present.

He then talked about Manifest calls and asked all team leaders to ensure that the 15 minute and 5 minute calls were complied with - it takes 3-5 minutes to walk from the manifest area to the boarding area. Listen out for calls, they would only be broadcast in the manifest area, not in the cafes etc. It was up to the Team Managers to ensure their competitors were aware of their slot times. He then introduced Franz Sagreber who was here with the AirShot AMD, and Hans Burgstaller who would be running the results, which would be fed directly to the IPC Results website.

Dare Svetina, the Chief Judge then introduced his judging panel and said he was looking forward to a good competition where the judges would work as hard as they could for the benefit of the competitors. He asked if any competitor was concerned about something to address that concern to him and not to members of the judging panel.

He and Gernot also spoke about protests and said they hoped that any compeittor who felt they had grounds for a protest would follow the complaints procedure first to try to resolve the issue with the officials involved, before taking the final route of writing up a protest and parting with 50 euros.