Corinna Schwiegershausen <<corinna>>
writes:

Please understand that I want to do everything I can to make a
women's title possible, because it is important to me to promote and support
more women into our great sport of hang gliding.

From this whole conversation, it seems to me that CIVL does not want to change
the status quo of holding a separate competition for the hopefully eight women
we might get for the worlds in Brasilia. I still see a great conflict there. The
following points seem discriminating to me:

1. I have worked many years to become part of my open national team to fly the
open worlds and be able to score for my team and score high in the world
ranking, thus being more likely to qualify for my open team again to be able to
compete at European and World Championships.

2. It is important for me and my sponsor that I am able to compete for my gender
title, aka the women's world champion title.

3. It has not been my fault or intention that the open and women's world
championships collide in time as separate, individual competitions - this has
never happened before in the history of hang gliding or paragliding, and it is
impossible to see the advantage of why it should be happening now in Brasilia
for the first time.

4. The top 50% of the women's world ranking can be nominated for their open
national team and have to choose between flying for their gender title OR being
able to score for their national team and for high points in the world ranking,
thus improving their chance to qualify for their worlds team again, motivating
other girls by seeing that it is possible (and returning possible points for
their team as a return for their NAC's support to join the world championships)

5. In my, Françoise's, Claudia's and Sasha's case, you are cutting out qualified
team pilots of scoring for our national teams if we try to make a women's world
title possible and decide to fly in the women's competition - in this way, a
fair team competition according to the Sporting Code Section 7 is not possible,
because the French, Russian, Colombian and German teams are disadvantaged by
possibly loosing one of their top scoring pilots.

6. Imagine that you make the top 50% of the male pilots choose between flying
for their gender world champion title OR being able to score for their national
team and for their individual world ranking, thus qualification for the next
world's team - do you agree that there would be a huge irritation, possibly a
protest of the guys? This is what you are doing to the top performers of the
women. Yes, we are a minority and not as loud as the guys, but we do exist. And
the majority of the women concerned had not been asked or involved before a
decision had been made at the meeting in Salzburg.

For sure I see your point that you wanted to motivate more women into flying
competitions and qualifying for the worlds. I appreciate yours and Jamie's work
a lot, and I think we all need to stick together much closer with ideas how to
make this possible. Just for Brasilia, it is a different situation altogether,
cause most girls can only do this big trip with support by their NAC. The NACs
see the greatest value of us girls if we can score for our national teams as
well, in case we have the open and women's worlds at the same time.

Please reconsider your decision of making smaller, separate tasks for the 8
women that we hopefully might be, and instead allow us to fly in the open world
championships as in Forbes and as in paragliding competitions, enabling us to
score world ranking points, to score for our teams if we managed to get
nominated, and still have a well deserved women's world champion title in the
end of what is going to be a tough marathon competition.

Stef-CIVL <<stefmalbos>>
writes:

It is a no win situation. If we agree with you, some women will
not go and we might fall short of the 8+4. If we don’t, some women will fly with
the Overall so Women and we might fall short of the 8+4. This has been discussed
at length, CIVL has made its choice and will not change the rules agreed by its
Plenary.

Sure there is a win win answer to this. It's just that Stephane
wants to stick with a poor decision.

1) Let national teams include six national team pilots plus allow up to two
women per team in addition to the national team members.

2) All women in the competition are flying for the women's world championship.

3) The two additional women per team are flying for the overall championship as
well as for the women's world championship. They are not flying for the team
championship.

Otherwise an asterisked women's worlds, if any at all.