One of the many pleasant surprises at the Worlds was Max Bishop, the head of the FAI, coming to the Worlds in Laragne, a not too long distance away from his office in Lausanne, Switzerland. He came for a couple of days and gave the closing speech at the awards ceremony on Saturday morning after Alex Ploner was awarded first place and the Italian team won the Worlds beating out rival (in more ways than one) Austria.

Scott Barrett saw Max and took the opportunity to corner him at the reception after the speeches. Gerolf and I took that opportunity to join in the "attack." Scott's major complaint was that CIVL was not taking the proper steps with regard to safety concentrating on areas (sprogs) that do little for safety, and even they're not doing it correctly.

Gerolf's complaint was that the FAI was top down and undemocratic forcing CIVL from the top to take actions that were not useful with respect to safety. I was there as "the press" to see what was going down. Max recognized that the paragliding side of CIVL was not doing much, if anything to address his safety concerns.

You might remember that Max gave a speech at the CIVL Plenary in February. The reference to the speech is found here. This is the speech combined with the actions of the DHV that lead to the sprog measurements at Laragne (that were all great fun).

A number of us have complaints about this speech. In particular that it didn't differentiate between paragliding and hang gliding. Just look at the safety record at this 2009 Hang Gliding Worlds compared to the 2009 Paragliding Worlds in Valle de Bravo. Well, there is no comparison. Even Max Bishop commended us (and the organizers) for the clean bill of health here.

This was mainly due to the good work of the task committee, and safety committee, the meet director, the French weather people (under contract) and the meet organizers, who very carefully considered the weather implications and now the day played out. Tasks were stopped three times due to weather. Tasks weren't even attempted on days with weather that wasn't appropriate. Launch was closed when conditions were unsafe.

This is what makes for a safe contest, knowledgeable people in charge of the contests. Not some charade measuring sprogs before the meet. We have already proved that sprogs are not engaged in normal flight.

Gerolf's complaint, and Scott's too, includes the fact that CIVL does not have the expertise (mainly in its delegates) to be making rules that are applied to competition. The sprog rules being a prime example. Like in the USHPA, the meeting geeks rule and rule blindly.

Max did berate the editor and publisher of the Oz Report for reporting that there was a history of conflict between the FAI and the Hungarian Aerosports Association. He says it was a flat out lie. Hmmm?! It seems that the Hungarian National Hang Gliding Team feels otherwise. Apparently Max forgot to read the qualifier that I included with that story.

Max apparently wanted me to check with him first on whether that story was true or not. When I said that he was perfectly free to challenge the story's veracity in a message to me that I would gladly post in the Oz Report, he indicated that he couldn't be bothered to respond to all the three hundred emails he gets each day or articles like mine. Welcome, to the new media world, Max.

My sources verified the truth of the story, which I didn't even detail and was a minor part of my story, so that was enough for me to go with it. If Max has a response, let him come to me.

I was also told at the reception by the Hungarian Team leader that we were not supposed to be seen together. I wonder what that was about. Later I saw Ferenc, the Hungarian pilot who is making so much trouble, speaking with Max.

One quote from Max (in jest), "Hang gliders are more highly evolved than paragliders." He did use to be a sailplane competitor.