SGP USA, Fidler, Good Start!
credits Bozena Michalowski / Sean Fidler, Day1 winner, and his best wingman
Day one of National SGP in USA is over! And it is a clear day win for Sean Fidler from USA on his As33es with a smooth 99kph average speed. Not a huge day for the area weather conditions wise, but job is done and we know the feeling for pilots and organisers!
I don’t know what you think about the race, but timing is quite perfect for us from Europe, and I’m looking forward to follow this week of air race in America.
But let’s first congratulate Sean Fidler. He made a bit of a distance compared to the other competitors during the first stage of the race and was able to keep his advantage all along the 200km. Seems easy, sometimes not! Then, the battle for the 2nd place was between Gintas Zube from Lithuania and a gaggle of USA and Canadian pilots. Gintas used all his experience to take the lead of this chasing group at the right moment, and win the 8pts. It was then a very tight final glide between Fernando Silva (USA), 3rd, followed by Erik Nelson (USA) 4th (+17 seconds) and Sergei Morozov (Canada) 5th (+18 seconds). I can imagine how tense and concentrated pilots were in cockpits to optimize the best they could this final glide. You know then that, after landing, the classical “what if” enters the endless discussions between pilots, talking about the many opportunities each had during the race to win these missing 30 seconds on the finish line to grab more points!
Yes, this is the essence of our sport: you need to do less mistakes! There is no perfect flight, but you need to do better than the others. Just a tiny tad better. Easy hu? So, again, congratulations to Sean for the best job performed yesterday. We know Sean is ultra competitive, focussed on the details, a clear tactician coming from Sailing sport. He will do his best the whole week, don’t be fooled! But some pilots around are clearly here to win a ticket for the final, and my giant pop corn bowl is ready.
Thanks all organisers to turn this real. Please pilots, have fun and fly safe. And share your fun with your teams and us on social media. We need pictures from the air to feel the race.
Follow the USA Sailplane Grand Prix on https://sgp.aero/usa2025
Benjamin Néglais, SGP Core Team
