Day 7 Task 7 : 45km race to goal
Quote of the day & so true;  "... here in Colombia we have 10,000 colours of green"

The morning was unexpectedly sunny which bizarely is a bad sign here!
We arrived on launch in sun but were quickly surrounded by cloud from the heated valley.

Following the soup to launch!

Layers of stratus cloud started moving through bringing shadow and some rain over Roldanillo as the free-flyers were in the air.

The early morning sunny sky effect! From this ...

... to this after the start!

We discussed various options for tasks to keep pilots safe from the forecast wind, but when it came to it, the 100% cloud cover appeared to be more of a problem!
We finally reduced our original 65km task to a 45km race due to the completely dark overcast sky ... we did think that it might very probably be stopped or cancelled, but the weather Goddess was playing nice today!

Task 7 :)

A start over Roldanillo to make the local people happy, then to Toro in the north and  goal at Zarzal.

The MD's eye view

From the launch it was possible to watch progress of the task and just 40 minutes in we saw 2 lonely Mantras speeding ahead of the pack on the return leg from Toro to goal ... not surprisingly Steban & Julian were racing again ahead again, this time with the company of Matty Senior & Daniel Vallejo :) These Colombian guys are in F1 mode, Julian & Steban are virtually untouchable in the rankings here!
Some pilots are flying back from goal now, others will be back soon in retrieve buses.

Update: Todays task had 68 in goal - amazing on a day we thought would be a no-task day!

Our Official Ice-Cream man
There is no competition without Ice-Cream!

Prizegiving & the final party is at 8pm ...

What a week!

7 days, 7 race tasks to goal (none stopped)
522 task kilometers
A winner with 6803 points out of an available 6960 ... incredible! In the words of other World Cup pilots here - "it is impossible to fly a paraglider faster than these 2 guys (julian and steban) ... " We all hope that the experience fills them with confidence for a fantastic results in Valla Superfinal!

Tired but very hapy greetings from the amazing Rolda Wonderland :)))))))))

Task 7 results:
1. Steban Novoa COL (R11)
2. Matt Senior NZL (R11)
3. Daniel Vallejo COL (R11)

Overall results:
1. Julian Andres Carreño COL (R10)
2. Steban Novoa COL (R11)
3. Brad Gunnuscio USA (R11)

Serial results:
1. Sebas Pardo COL (AirDesign Pure)
2. Guy Anderson GBR (Gin GTO)
3. Arnie Frankenberger USA (M4)

Womens results:
1. Daria Krasnova RUS (Axis Venus3)

Its been a long hard week! ;-)