About the USA Soaring Teams
Each year soaring pilots from around the nation come together to compete for the title of National Champion in their respective classes. These events have all the drama, intrigue and competitive challenge of more widely recognized sporting events. National competitors are ranked by class with typically the top two pilots being selected by the Soaring Society of America to represent the United States at World Gliding Championships.
World
Gliding Championships
World Gliding Championships (WGC) are considered to be the highest expression of competitive
soaring with the best sailplane pilots
from around the world coming together to determine a
champion of champions. Championships can last for ten days or more with victory
coming by only the thinnest of margins in many cases. Some have compared
the competitive challenge of WGC soaring to America’s Cup yacht racing
or World Cup Soccer. All World Gliding Championships are held under the auspices
of the Federation
Aeronautique International (FAI) and
the International Gliding Committee (IGC).
U.S.
Soaring Team History
The history of United
States Soaring Teams is a rich one. Since
1950, the Soaring Society of America has fielded pilots to World
Gliding Championships with honor and distinction. Five United States pilots
including Paul MacCready,
Jr, A.J. Smith, George Moffat (2), and Doug Jacobs have
returned home as World Champions.
The
Team
Archive is the place to find the original accounts of world
championships from the pages of Soaring magazine, view the historical team
images and see the team patches. As
part of the overall archive tour see the
U.S. Team History for a
chart listing all U.S. Soaring Teams since 1950 and the
WGC Champions
page for a historical listing of World Champions since 1937.
More
Opportunity
Exciting changes to world
level competitive soaring have been occurring over the last several years.
New classes, new events and even new championships have been evolving. Currently there are
eight classes active in competitive soaring. These are
the Open,
15-Meter,
Standard,
18-Meter,
Club,
World,
Junior
and Feminine classes. These changes have opened up WGC participation to new segments
of the soaring community fostering new enthusiasm in the
emerging classes.
U.S. Teams Important To Soaring
Our soaring teams represent our nation and our soaring
community internationally. Competitive soaring, the prospect of team
membership and international competition builds participation in the
sport, provides motivation to achieve at a higher level and pushes the
boundaries of pilot skill and technology. Competitive soaring rewards excellence while supplying some of the spark
that keeps our sport going. Competitors tend to be among the most active
in the sport on the local and national level while generally giving back
to the community as club presidents, instructors and supporters.
U.S.
Team Selection
United States Soaring
Team pilots are chosen by the Soaring Society of America (SSA) based on
recent performance in National and World-level competition. After each of
the U.S. Nationals, competitors' scores are compared to the winner's
score. Each of the national winners receives a ranking score of 100 with
the rest of the field ranked based on how close their scores are to the
winners. The pilots current and two previous
years performance are considered when selecting U.S. Soaring Team members with the
current year being weighted more heavily.
U.S. Soaring Team rankings can be very close with only a fraction of a point separating competitors. When U.S. pilots do well in world level contests they earn bonus points that count toward their selection to future U.S. Soaring Teams. The number of team members who represent the United States at a World Soaring Championships is ultimately determined by the World Championship contest organizers and the SSA. The complete description of the U.S. Soaring Team Selection Method is available at John Leibacher's excellent Soaring Server site under contests. See the U.S. Team Selection page for more.
U.S. Team Structure
United States Soaring Teams
are managed by the U.S. Soaring Team Committee Chairman as established by the Soaring Society of America Board of Directors in 1995 and
modernized in 2003.
