Annecy opening ceremony World Championships

Today started with teambriefing during breakfast at 8am. Some of us were going to fly, so I prepared my gear to go up to the Forclaz launch at 10am. All I wanted to do was to test my new harness from Woody Valley. The Tenax 3 was very comfortable in the air, and for landing it felt supereasy - a great first try, Im looking forward to use it in this worlds competition!
After landing, Dennis Pagen measured the pitch of my glider and told me "way too high, you can take it down a comfortable bit!" All good there. At 3pm, we joined a 2 hour obligatory safety briefing, followed by the opening ceremony which took us around the head quarter. A nice get together with dinner and drinks was organized by comp director Richard Walbec and his millions of helper - there are so many volunteers here helping to make it a smooth comp for all the pilots, it is fantastic to see how enthusiastic everybody is.
The biggest national team this time is from Japan! Seven women, six guys in rigid class and also quite a few in sports class - the creme de la creme of the whole Japanese hang gliding world is over here in Annecy to compete, it was impressive to see them all.
Weather forecast for tomorrow looks grim, some storms and rain, not good for flying, but it would have been only a training task. A good day to tweak the equipment a bit, polish the helmets and visors, rig the radio gear, just get everything right for the first big day!