Betinho Schmitz writes:

For the last year, many pilots worldwide had been asking us
(Brazilian pilots) to organize another World Championship. This is quite
flattering and to honor their interest, I would like to inform everyone about
what has happened.

The idea of organizing the Worlds in Brasilia for 2015 has been going around for
quite a while now; however during the last NAC meeting (in Nov. 2012) some
internal problems became worse and the directives did not allow for the bid to
be completed in time. The Brazilian pilots were not happy with several issues
that have been going on for a long time here. Finally there was an extraordinary
meeting, called to take serious actions in order to improve the situation which
was not helping hang gliding improve in Brazil and, on January 14th 2013, a new
board of directors of our NAC was elected.

Chico Santos is now president of our NAC and the new group really wants the
project of the Worlds to be pushed forward, among other things, and I have been
elected Chief competition organizer. Worlds or not, this is a very important
change for our sport in Brazil.

Because of this situation, it was impossible for us to be able to present the
bid to the CIVL for the February Plenary in time (Dec. 2012), this is very
unfortunate. However, we still wanted to give it a try, so we contacted our
government and possible sponsors and even prepared the bid; we did not want to
let the dream stop there. When we asked the CIVL to accept our bid, knowingly
that we were late hoping they would understand we could not have done it any
earlier, we still thought there was a chance. Unfortunately, their reply was
negative insisting they cannot accept it after the deadline, especially when
there was a bid already submitted (Mexico). We understand their position;
however wish there would be something that could be done.

We just wanted pilots to understand what happened and to know that it is not
that the Brazilians don't want to do the next Worlds, but that it was a problem
of bureaucracy that has hurt us all. We thank you for wanting to come fly with
us in our beautiful Brasilia and hope it will be possible sometime soon. In any
case we still have the Cat. 2 competition in August this year. At the plenary
the delegates (who represent the pilots) will have the possibility to vote "yes"
or "no" on one bid only, we were just out of time and don't see what could be
done about this.