

SECOND EVENT OF 2016 PWC - GEMONA, ITALY
Published on:
12 Jun 2016
The second event of the 2016 PWC season has come to a close after 2 valid tasks in less than ideal conditions around Gemona Italy.
OZONE team newcomer Hernan Pitocco had this to say of the race:
"After the first task of 87 km, a canceled day and a few rainy days our last chance to fly was on Friday. We got to launch and the clouds were 300 meters below it so we waited for three hours until we got the window to set a 68 km task.
The sky was completely covered, so at the start everybody was at cloud base flying near the start point cylinder. I kept a good position and had a great start.
In the beginning nothing looked clear to me, the day was cold and the lift was light and broken. At this point I thought nobody was going to make it to goal, so on the way to the first waypoint I got into my conservative mode and decided to fly patiently ( don’t attack, don’t attack…).
A big group decided to take a line to the south east toward the coast looking for the first sun light that hit the valley, a second group decided to take a line to the north east toward the shady mountain side of the valley and I decided to stay turning a zero, released big part of my ballast, reached cloud base and followed a straight line to the first waypoint.
In this transition I saw a dozen of pilots coming back from the waypoint extremely low and sinking down… nothing seemed to work so I added more patience to my strategy. I finally tagged the first waypoint and found another zero that I worked for half an hour before I aimed for the second waypoint.
Thinks started to get better and 20 km from goal I switched to the Attack mode, tagged the last waypoint and with a big group of pilots following, I climbed again and got the right altitude to glide to goal! I crossed the line with a big smile and confirmed that there was nobody else in Goal but Yury Mishanin from Russia. On Saturday was raining in Gemona, there was no chance for a task. The competition had finished, and after two task I got the third place. To me another inspiring result flying among the best pilots in the world!"
The overall win went to Andreas Malecki, 2nd to Jurij Vidic, and 3rd to Hernan Pitocco, all flying Enzo 2s.
The Women’s saw Silvia Buzzi Ferraris in 1st , Seiko Fukuoka Naville in 2nd both flying Enzo 2s , and Yvonne Dathe in 3rd on her M6. In the top 10, 8 pilots flew Enzo 2s.
Full results can be found here
Congrats to all the pilots and cheers from all the team at OZONE!