Castejon de Sos : World Cup

I have very little to say about the World Cup. It should have been a great experience with good friends, but turned out to be one of the saddest times I have experienced.
Any accident chills us, but losing a pilot during an event makes us look at what we do in another light. Since the day that Dmitry died I have had all manner of feelings about what we could have done/should have done. But I guess the only way forward from this is to try to improve in what we do to reduce the chance of it ever happening again.
A number of pilots have criticised the organisation for how we dealt with the situation. Its their right to do that. All of us in the organisation are pilots, most of us compete. We were feeling the same anger and loss too but had to keep it under control so that we could deal with official-dom as well as supporting Dmitry's family while they stayed here.
After the competition was finished Xavier, Nikolay and I spent time with Dmitry's mother and girlfriend. We talked about why we fly and why we compete and the sense of completeness, of living within a family and of truly living life that it brings us.
Sometimes the cost of this is high but how many of us will change what we do?
We all know that paragliding is dangerous. We accept the fact because we want to fly and enjoy the beauty of it.