Fractured Axel

My understanding is that there are currently National titles in Precision, Ballet and Overall. If that's the case there is currently no reason why you couldn't compete for just one of the titles. Or course I could be totally wrong.

I can understand the desire to stage additional public-friendly ballet competitions, but I'd prefer it not to be at the expense of the precision element.

If it's at a festival where the public make up most of the audience then I think you have to take them into account.

This is precisely the point. We can keep precision the precision discipline in competitions where the environment is largely under our control. At Middle Wallop we are there primarily for ourselves, and public entertainment is to some extent secondary. This is also the case at Rougham to a lesser extent.

In order to extend the scope of competition flying, we have to reach more festivals. A lot of festivals would not be interested in staging a full STACK event because the precision competition makes up about 65% of the total time in the arena. A ballet only event is much easier for organisers to get their brains around. Music.. lots of commentary. It is a better show.

I think also that ballet-only competitions will encourage new competitors into the arena. Matt is right that we already run separate championships for precision and ballet, and you can end up a national champion in either discipline even if you do not win overall. However, this is not entirely obvious to the wider world because we wrap precision and ballet competitions into the same event.

This is all about providing flyers with more opportunity to compete, not less. The idea is to make the attendance of a competition a day trip. Therefore you are not forced to make it to both days unless you want to watch the competitions on the other day, or attend the festival for fun.

Just out of interest, does anybody know how many precision and ballet competitions the average french pilot has in a year?

If Newbury had happened this year, Teams and Pairs would have had five opportunities to compete, and individuals four opportunities. What number of precision events is the optimum number? I have no problem with STACK attempting to stage five full precision and ballet rounds next year (in addition to ballet competitions). However, turning out Alec Elliot and his arena setup five times is going to be expensive.

This year a competitor in the individual competition will have paid approx £50 pounds just to enter all the rounds of the nationals. A competitor in pairs will have paid £60 and a competitor in both individual and pairs will have paid about £80. I think that this is already pretty expensive.

Bearing in mind that for Ballet-only competitions, the infrastructure would be the existing festival. As a result the only "cost" would expenses to the judging staff. As a result of this, such a competition would be very much cheaper than staging a full STACK competition.

With regard to making it policy next year, such a decision would not be made until the AGM in October. So far this thread is throwing up some interesting comments. Please keep them coming.

aphelps wrote:

Just out of interest, does anybody know how many precision and ballet competitions the average french pilot has in a year?

I believe that each competitor has to do a minimum of three events to qualify for the national finals.

Hmmm. Now there is a difference between French and the UK. In France each region has it's own series and STACK/FFVL only coordinate the central competition.

They also have their own 'competition clubs' which we do not really have.

OK I'm just thinking out loud here...

This year a competitor in the individual competition will have paid approx £50 pounds just to enter all the rounds of the nationals. A competitor in pairs will have paid £60 and a competitor in both individual and pairs will have paid about £80. I think that this is already pretty expensive.

Plus their competition licence. (I cant remember how much that is).

However, the main expense (for non-sponsored flyers at any rate) is kit. I reckon I probably have a total expenditure approaching £1000/yr on kite related stuff, by the time you take into account camping equipment, bootcamp, lines, kites, clothing... the works. More if you take into account the cost of time off work. Even so, I don't think you could count kiting as an expensive hobby. What other sport could you compete in at national level for so little? Imagine how much a golfer or a tennis player must pay, just to practice! (Yes, I know the rewards are greater for them - perhaps we should think about prizes/ prize money)

I know money is an issue for many people, but I think we have to take accept that if we are to take ourselves seriously, we have to be prepared to put our money where out mouths are, so to speak.

On the other hand, if we raise the financial cost to competing, will we drive away flyers? It is a debate we need to have. Perhaps we need to think more creatively about how we fund our sport.

Oh - and on the issue of spectators. These are not fee paying spectators. Do we really have to put on a show for them? Perhaps we do. I'm just asking the question. Let's think about this. The festival offers us the use of their arena to put on a show to attract punters to spend money at the traders who pay for a pitch at a festival who give us an arena... Presumably the traders are profiting from this. Yet we are still effectively paying for the privelidge of putting on a show. I'm wondering if we are getting maximum benefit from this arrangement? What do others think?

Plus their competition licence. (I cant remember how much that is).

The figures quoted included the competition licence (£30). But as Steve points out, the entry fees are a small proportion of the total cost if you take a broad view.

Oh - and on the issue of spectators. These are not fee paying spectators. Do we really have to put on a show for them?

Good point, but not what I am driving at. The proposal for ballet-only competitions is primarily to provide the following;
a) An introductory level competition for new competitors.
b) A sharper display-orientated competition that is more entertaining, thereby hopefully encouraging new competitors to take up the sport.
c) Freeing up STACK time at festivals to enable us to concentrate more on contact with the public, tuition etc.
d) Working with new festivals to extend the reach of STACK beyond Southern England.

I agree that there is a balance to be struck with festivals, and I think that we do have a reasonable balance at the moment. The main reason for debating this now is that I cannot see how STACK UK can grow in future unless it evolves to offer competitions that allow the number of festivals involved to be extended without placing onerous requirements on the organisers. Perhaps a sensible person would leave things as they are, but I cannot see how this is anything other than a controlled decline.

Keep the thoughts coming.

This comment made via Smartgroups from Andy Taylor. I think that there could be some merit in it;

2)If we're able to use festival arenas and PA's for ballet only events, we could run a different kind of competition for which we don't need all the officials, nor, I think, would we need to get it sanctioned. The competition can be peer judged and the competitors are simply ranked in order of excellence (as opposed to being scored)by their peers, a bit like trick-out, except that every competitor puts in a ranking list which excludes themselves, the ranking positions carry points and it's then easy enough to get a concensus result based on the points.

It would result in a separate ballet-only series, which is not really my preference. But the separate series would be logistically "lighter" and STACK would not have to provide formal judging and there would not be arena size restrictions.