FAI Free Flight World Cup 2004

In 2004 the Free Flight World Cup had the greatest number of competitions ever. This resulted in the largest number of participants and total entry, but rather inevitably with over 40 competitions in F1A, there was some reduction in the average entry for each competition.

F1A was won by the defending title holder, Per Findahl of Sweden, who recorded potential scoring results in 11 competitions. In comparison with last year his victory this year was by a clear margin of 6 points ahead of Vladislav Lazarevich (Ukraine) and Mikhail Kochkarev (Russia) in second and third places.

Veronika Vivchar of Ukraine won the F1A-junior with 6 places in junior classifications, while flying well enough to also take 14th place in the open F1A World Cup results. The second place was taken by Janis Zarins (Latvia), also with points from three junior victories but with fewer bonus points than Veronika.

F1B was won by Anselmo Zeri (Netherlands) with three first places in competitions with high entries and so yielding enough bonus points to give him a very clear margin over the next 5 people in the F1B results, who had also all won 3 events. From these, Radik Kuziev (Russia) was runner-up and third was Bernd Silz (Germany) who was winner in 2001 and 2003.

Reinhard Truppe of Austria won F1C ahead of Laszlo Patocs (Hungary) and Bib Gutai (USA).

F1E was won by Marian Popescu (Romania) successfully defending his title from his compatriot Daniel Petcu who had been the victor in 2001 and 2002. Third place was taken by Fritz Mang of Austria. In the junior F1E category the top three places were taken by Romanian flyers, with Daniel Bildea winning the title. He had narrowly missed a podium position in the open F1E results, where he finished 4th, two points behind Fritz Mang.

ORGANISATION

During 2004 most results were returned very quickly by email. A notable exception was the Israel Championships: held in August the results were not provided until November. All competitions except Israel and the Stonehenge Cup provided results in electronic form, which greatly facilitates processing of the World Cup results.

Organisers had been requested to provide FAI licence numbers for each competitor. When this is done it greatly aids recognition of a competitor given that spelling of names often varies between competitions. However, some failed to provide this basic information and this information will be elevated to a definite requirement for all results in 2005.

There were continued problems with competitions not meeting the standard expected on an FAI Open International, in some cases this a lack of information before the event and at other events some shortcoming in the actual competition. Most but not all competitions provided jury reports, which are placed on the web site along with the results. A written complaint was made against the Sezimovo Usti competition. This was investigated and the response of the organiser and the Jury at the event were at variance with the complaint. Since no protest had been made at the event it was not possible to take this matter further.

Note about the inclusion of juniors in these statistics: The individual events F1A, F1A-Junior, etc show the numbers relevant to that event. The column headed ALL and the total number of competitors are not totals of all events but are reduced to take account of any occurrences of a junior in the results of the main event.

Number of competitors per country, only those scoring points in 2 or more events:

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This page produced by Ian Kaynes