What started out over a year ago as an effort to gut our existing
competition system died a quiet death at the Spring USHPA BOD meeting. Bell
Belcourt, top competition paraglider pilot, presented the work of his
subcommittee which edited the existing USHPA 2006 Competition Rulebook. A motion
was made to accepted his new rulebook. Not a single hand was raised for
discussion after the motion was seconded. It was passed unanimously.

You'll find the 2010 USHPA Competition Rulebook
here. This is, of course, what is referred to now as the Race to Goal
Competition Rulebook. The Sport Class was opened up to all classes of gliders by
Bill and Steve Kroop after this edition.

The USHPA BOD also passed the Sanctioning Manual but with some changes. You'll
find the original proposal
here. I'll publish
the revised version as soon as I get it.

The BOD also approved rulebooks for accredited (local) events, aerobatics, and
"open distance" competitions. There may be some editing yet to do on these.

The tide against our competition program was turned just before the last USHPA
BOD meeting, when the Competition Workgroup finally realized that it was better
to create something new rather than destroy something that was working just
fine. They created different competitions types (to accommodate the King
Mountain meet), and the level of conflict was greatly reduced.

During the presentation by Paul Allen of his proposal for the Open Distance
competition, he stated that after he read the 2006 Competition Rulebook he was
very impressed and intrigued by Race to Goal competitions. Before he had been
put off by what he had "heard" about them and about rules that seemed to be
arcane (without him ever reading the rules). He thought Race to Goal was very
cool, after all.

Ironic, 'eh?