Paragliding Competitions over the Years - 2013 Edition

Paragliding Competitions over the Years Edition 2013

Šazoom.ch

JĂśrg Ewald 29 April 2013

Paragliding Competitions over the Years

Edition 2013

Contents 1

Summary.......................................................................................................................................... 2 1.1 Key Indicators .......................................................................................................................... 2 1.1.1 Competitions ................................................................................................................... 2 1.1.2 Competitors ..................................................................................................................... 3 1.1.3 Participations ................................................................................................................... 3 1.2 Conclusions Part 1 ................................................................................................................... 4 1.3 The Crisis.................................................................................................................................. 4 1.4 Conclusions, Part 2 .................................................................................................................. 4 1.5 Recommendations................................................................................................................... 5 2 Introduction..................................................................................................................................... 6 3 Competitions, Competitors and Participations over the Years ....................................................... 7 3.1 Competitions ........................................................................................................................... 7 3.1.1 Competitions and Tasks................................................................................................... 8 3.2 Competitors ............................................................................................................................. 9 3.2.1 Ranked Pilots ................................................................................................................. 10 3.2.2 Newcomers.................................................................................................................... 10 3.2.3 Active Years ................................................................................................................... 12 3.3 Participations ......................................................................................................................... 12 3.3.1 Participations per Pilot .................................................................................................. 13 3.3.2 Competition Size............................................................................................................ 17 3.4 Overall View .......................................................................................................................... 19 4 Conclusions Part 1 ......................................................................................................................... 21 4.1 Conclusion 1: Ours is a small but competitive world ............................................................ 21 4.2 Conclusion 2: Ours is not a sticky world ................................................................................ 22 4.3 Conclusion 3: Everything is connected .................................................................................. 22 4.4 Conclusion 4: Something happened in 2011 ......................................................................... 22 5 Further Investigations ................................................................................................................... 24 5.1 Weather................................................................................................................................. 24 5.2 Economy – and some more on weather ............................................................................... 25 5.3 Accessibility ........................................................................................................................... 28 5.4 Piedrahita – and some more on economics .......................................................................... 29 6 Conclusions Part 2 ......................................................................................................................... 34 6.1 Crisis or Normal? ................................................................................................................... 34 6.2 Causes .................................................................................................................................... 34 6.2.1 External Causes.............................................................................................................. 34 6.2.2 Internal Causes .............................................................................................................. 35 6.3 Remedies ............................................................................................................................... 35 Appendix A: Methodology..................................................................................................................... 38 Appendix B: Raw data ........................................................................................................................... 40 Appendix C: Database queries .............................................................................................................. 50

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1 Summary How many paragliding competitions are there, year after year? How many pilots compete, and how often? This report was created to answer these questions, and many others which are closely related, with the goal of gaining some insights into the inner workings of the international paragliding competitions scene.

There is no central place where information on all competitions worldwide is collected. The report is based on all the FAI Category 2 paragliding competitions listed in CIVL’s World Pilot Ranking System, WPRS. The WPRS includes the vast majority of all international competitions, dating back to 2001.

Even though the data this report is based on stems from CIVL, this is a purely private initiative and not connected to CIVL in any way.

1.1 Key Indicators In a first part, the report looks at the three major indicators: Number of competitions, number of competitors, and number of participations in 2012 (Table 1). It then compares those figures with the values of previous years (Figure 1). For each of these major indicators, a number of minor ones, like for example years of pilots’ activity, or the average size of competitions, is evaluated as well.

Average 2006-2011

2012

165

162

Number of pilots

3884

3906

Number of participations

8542

7939

Number of competitions

Table 1: Key indicators for 2012 compared to long-term average 140% competitions 135%

pilots participations

130% 125% 120% 115% 110% 105% 100% 2006

2007

2008

2009

2010

2011

2012

Figure 1: Key indicators over time 1.1.1

•

Competitions

The number of competitions dropped in 2012 for the second time in a row, to the level of 2008.

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Paragliding Competitions over the Years •

• • • •

1.1.2

• • •

• • •

1.1.3

• • • • • • • •

Edition 2013

The share of competitions without any tasks was above average in 2012 at 19%, but still smaller than the all-time high in 2011 where 24% of all sanctioned competitions did not submit any results.

The number of planned tasks corresponds with the number of competitions and dropped from 762 in 2011 to 707 in 2012, well below the all-time high of 813 in 2010.

In 2012, 41% of all planned tasks had to be cancelled. This is in line with the long-time average, and much better than 2011, where 48% of all tasks had been cancelled.

The average competition is planned for a bit more than four tasks. This number has been stable for the last several years.

The average competition manages to score a bit more than 3 tasks. In 2011, the number had been below 3, but recovered to the usual level in 2012.

Competitors

The number of competitors dropped in 2012 for the second time in a row, to the level of 2008.

The share of female pilots lay between 7 and 8% for the last few years. It was slightly higher, at exactly 8%, in 2011 and 2012.

The number of competitors ranked in the WPRS dropped in 2011, but rose in 2012 due to a rule change in early 2012 which added roughly 1000 pilots to the ranking. The share of female pilots in the ranking dropped slightly from 7.9% in 2011 to 7.7% in 2012.

The number of newcomers reached an all-time high in 2010 at 1234, dropped to the lowest level since 2003 in 2011 (932) and remained at that level in 2012 (937).

The number of pilots who stopped competing dropped from the all-time high of 1204 in 2011 to 978 in 2012, which is still above the long-term average.

The vast majority of pilots are only active for one year. Only 460 pilots (4%) have been active for 10 or more years.

Participations

The number of participations recovered slightly in 2012, rising from 7817 in 2011 to 7939, which is still lower than the level of 2007.

The share of female participations rose for the second year in a row, up from 8.7% in 2011 to 9.4% in 2012.

The average pilot competed in exactly 2 competitions in 2012, the same as 2011, and therefore much lower than previous years back to 2005.

The average female pilot, on the other hand, increased her participation from 2.1 competitions in 2011 to 2.4 in 2012, which is at the usual level for the past few years.

54% of all pilots competed in only a single competition in 2012. On the other hand, only 569 pilots (15%) participated in four or more competitions in 2012.

Throughout the whole period from 2001 to 2012, 36% of all pilots competed in only a single competition. 983 pilots (7%) have competed in 20 or more competitions during this period.

The average competition size rose from an all-time low of 57.5 pilots in 2011 to 60.6 in 2012, which is still lower than any year before 2010.

A comparison with previous years shows that mainly the number of big competitions with more than 100 competitors was lower in 2012 than the long-term average.

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1.2 Conclusions Part 1 The findings given above lead to a first set of conclusions: 1. The international paragliding competition scene is relatively small in numbers, but quite big in relation to the overall population of paraglider pilots, compared to other sports. But many of the paragliding competitors show a level of commitment to the sport that would not qualify them as international competitors in other sports.

2. Many of the international competitors only participate in a single competition, and then leave the scene again. Our sport lacks the clear structure and career outline given through multiple competition levels separated by clear qualification criteria as seen in other sports.

3. The development of the three main indicators, numbers of competitions, competitors and participations, is interconnected.

4. The international paragliding scene currently finds itself in a crisis, with all three main indicators declining over the last 2 years, to levels which had formerly been reached around 2008 or even earlier.

1.3 The Crisis Further investigations are performed to test four hypothesis regarding conclusion number 4 above, to find whether any of the following are possible causes for the crisis: • • • •

Bad weather The global economic situation, especially the downturn of the past few years Competitions and especially competition wings have become increasingly inaccessible The accidents in Piedrahita during the 2011 World Championships, followed by the suspension of Competition Class wings by CIVL

This work includes comparing the key indicators between paragliding and hang gliding, a sport which is exposed to a comparable, if not the same economic environment, as well as the same meteorological conditions. Figure 2 gives an abstract view of the relative growth of the two sports over the past three years. For an explanation refer to section 5.4 below. paragliding

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hang gliding

Figure 2: Growth rates of hang gliding and paragliding

For all four of the investigated potential causes, at least some supporting data can be identified. This leads to a second set of conclusions, regarding the current crisis.

1.4 Conclusions, Part 2 1. There are multiple factors involved, both internal and external ones.

2. The external factors include the global economy, the weather in the period from 2009 to 2011, as well as the accidents in Piedrahita and the ensuing controversy regarding various aspects of our sport spurred by CIVL’s reaction to those accidents.

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3. The internal factors refer back to the initial conclusion number 3, and further acknowledge the extent to which the numbers of competitions, competitors and participations influence each other. Another internal factor is the increasing gap between top pilots and newcomers in terms of experience and skill levels, which leads to frustration and only short involvement amongst the newcomers.

1.5 Recommendations Although not formulated as a goal initially, the report concludes with a small set of recommendations for CIVL which could help initiate a turnaround and bring international paragliding competitions back into a positive growth zone. This because the author is convinced that competitions are the best learning environment for aspiring cross-country pilots, and that a growing and healthy competition scene contributes to the safety of paragliding as a whole.

The main recommendations are: 1. Short term: Encourage competition organizers to set up competitions, for example by temporarily reducing the sanctioning fee.

2. Medium term: Investigate and clarify various aspects of our sport, mainly the actual safety situation in competitions, the actual liability situation for competition organizers and other stake-holders, as well as the wings to be flown in the near future.

3. Long-term: Develop multiple competition levels within the FAI Category 2, to facilitate newcomers’ paths towards the top, and keep them interested in competing for more than just one or two competitions.

Šazoom.ch

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2 Introduction A few years ago, on the paragliding forum1, a discussion sprang up about the key numbers in our sport: How many competitions are there each year? How many people compete? And are the numbers rising or falling, what are the trends? Being a competitor myself, and one with a very strong affinity to data and numbers, I didn’t take long to convince myself that I wanted to find answers to those questions. There is no place that gathers information on all competitions world-wide, unfortunately. But there is a place where information on most international competitions is collected: CIVL’s World Pilot Ranking System (WPRS). I used my Web browser and a big Excel spread sheet to answer the questions above: at that time browsing through the ranking pages online was my only access to the vast amounts of data buried within the WPRS. The results were pretty interesting, at least to me. So a year later I was very curious to find out about the further development, and especially whether my impression of the flying conditions in that particular year (bad, I thought) were somehow reflected by the WPRS, for example in the number of flown tasks (they were not). And this has now become more or less a habit: Every year I’d add the last twelve months’ worth of competitions, sometimes along with some more columns and charts to my Excel sheet. Sometimes I would post the updated charts on the forum, but just as often not – no point in going over last year’s data if last year is already 9 months away.

A very central member of the forum community once accused me – jokingly I believe – of having a number fetish. I guess he was not too wrong.

Then along came 2011: Grave accidents, a cancelled world championship, suspended gliders, politics, task forces. I could barely wait for the year to end – not only, but also so that I could update my charts and see how big the damage had been. Pretty big, I thought, but there may have been other factors at work. I decided to wait another year, to gather more data and hopefully get a clearer picture.

2012 has gone by now as well. In the meantime I’ve become responsible for CIVL’s software systems, and gained access to the WPRS database. No more Web browser and Excel, I can now evaluate the underlying data straight away, and gain insights that had not been possible before. This report is the result of those evaluations. But note that this work grew out of my very own and private curiosity and is by no means any official CIVL project, nor is this report an official CIVL document.

I owe a big “Thank you!” to Tom Payne and Adrian Thomas for reading through and giving valuable feedback on a first draft of this report.

Enjoy!

©azoom.ch

1

www.paraglidingforum.com

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3 Competitions, Competitors and Participations over the Years Information on how the data presented here was collected can be found in Appendix A, along with the definitions of all the terms used herein. The actual data this report is based on can be found in Appendix B. Appendix C lists all the database queries that were used to extract this data from the WPRS database.

The WPRS database covers competitions from 2001 to 2012. A summary is given in Table 2.

First competition

Mexico Open 01, 2001-01-14 – 2001-01-20

Latest competition

2012 SA Winelands, 2012-12-16 – 2012-12-22

Number of competitions

1433

Number of flown tasks

4118

Number of participations

78’508 (6391 by female pilots)

Number of pilots

12’963 (998 female)

Table 2: Key figures for all competitions since 2001

3.1 Competitions The key figures for competitions in 2012 are given in Table 3. According to those figures, 2012 was more or less in line with the long-term average since 2006. We had almost as many competitions, and therefore almost as many planned tasks. The percentage of competitions with no tasks is a little above average. The percentage of scored tasks is the same as the long-term average, indicating average global meteorological conditions in 2012.

Average 2006-2011 Number of competitions Competitions with no task Number of planned tasks Number of scored tasks

2012

165

162

27 (16%)

31 (19%)

732

707

435 (59%)

416 (59%)

Table 3: Competitions in 2012

To compare current numbers with the past, we only go back as far as 2006, for the following reasons: 1. Up until 2006, competitions which had been granted sanctioning, but did not submit results (because the weather did not allow flying any tasks, for example) do not appear in the database. This means that competition numbers from before 2006 cannot be compared directly with those after 2006.

2. Up until 2006, multi-event-competitions were sanctioned as one single competition. This again has an influence on comparability between competitions from before and after 2006.

But of course averages don’t tell the whole story. Figure 3 shows the development of competitions over the years: After a steady growth, to a peak in 2010 with 186 sanctioned competitions (157 with tasks) by 2012 the number of competitions has dropped back to the level of 2008. The share of competitions which did not submit any results was exceptionally high in 2011, but in 2012 is still higher than any time between 2006 and 2010.

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200

25%

180

% with 0 tasks

160

competitions

140

competitions with tasks

20%

120

15%

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10%

60 40

5%

20 -

0% 2001

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2012

Figure 3: Number of competitions 3.1.1

Competitions and Tasks

As was to be expected, Figure 4 shows that the number of planned tasks correlates with the number of competitions. It also peaks in 2010 with 813 planned tasks (483 of which were actually flown); by 2012 the number of planned tasks has dropped back to 707, the level of 2008. The fraction of cancelled tasks (which includes competitions that did not submit results for other reasons) was highest also in 2010, and dropped back to a normal level of 41% in 2012.

900

60% % tasks cancelled

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50%

competitions 700

tasks planned

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40%

tasks flown

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300 200

10% 100 -

0% 2001

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2012

Figure 4: Competitions and tasks

In Figure 5 we see that the planned number of tasks per competition is on a slight, but steady decline since 2006: Competitions tend to be shorter, which can probably also be explained by an increasing number of sanctioned week-end competitions. In 2012, the average competition was announced for 4.36 tasks. The much higher average number of tasks per competition in the period before 2006 can be explained by the fact that up to 2006, competition series (like for example national leagues) could be sanctioned as one single competition.

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On the other hand, for those competitions which actually take place, the average number of effectively flown tasks has been more or less stable; with the exception of 2011 where on average only 2.93 tasks were flown in a competition. In 2012, this value is back to 3.18.

7.00 6.00 5.00 4.00 3.00 2.00 planned tasks/competition 1.00

effective tasks/competition

2001

2002

2003

2004

2005

2006

2007

2008

2009

2010

2011

2012

Figure 5: Average number of tasks per competition

3.2 Competitors The key figures regarding competitors are given in Table 4. The number of pilots who competed in 2012 is slightly above the average of the past six years, the percentage of female pilots increased as well. The number of ranked pilots increased significantly in 2012 due to a rule change which lead to the inclusion of pilots who previously had not been ranked in the WPRS due to the lack of an FAI Sporting License. Of the 3906 competitors, 937 participated for the first time in a paragliding crosscountry competition – that’s 24%, a pretty high number. The long-term average is even higher at 28%.

Average 2006-2011 Number of pilots

2012

3884

3906

Number of female pilots

287 (7%)

312 (8%)

Number of ranked pilots

5844

Number of female ranked pilots Number of newcomers Number of female newcomers

6895

2

435 (7%)

533 (8%)

1095

937

94 (9%)

70 (7%)

Table 4: Competitors in 2012

Again, besides averages, the development over time is of interest. Figure 6 shows the number of competitors over the years. Similar to the number of competitions, we see a steady rise, to a peak of 4219 competitors in 2010, from where the curve drops back to 3906 in 2012, which corresponds with

2

Increase due to rule change: As of 2012, pilots not holding an FAI Sporting License are also ranked in the WPRS.

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the level in 2008. The relative number of female pilots is quite low at 8%, but slightly higher in the last two years, compared to all the previous years.

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Figure 6: Number of competitors 3.2.1

Ranked Pilots

Since the WPRS ranking operates on a three-year sliding window, the ranking at the end of a year includes all pilots who competed at least once in the past three years. These numbers are shown in Figure 7. Here, the drop-off after 2010 is compensated by the rule change in 2012, which added an estimated 1000 pilots to the ranking. The relative number of female pilots in the ranking varied between 7 and 8% over the last few years.

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Figure 7: Number of ranked pilots 3.2.2

Newcomers

As Figure 8 shows, every year about 1000 newcomers participate in their first competition. This number peaked in 2010 at 1234, and dropped to 932 in 2011, 937 in 2012 – the level of 2005. The 29 April 2013

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percentage of female newcomers declined from 9.4% to 7.6 between 2007 and 2010, jumped up to almost 10.8% in 2011, just to drop down to 7.5% in 2012. Of notice here is the distribution between male and female newcomers, especially the surge in new women in 2011. This can at least partially be attributed to the second, very successful Women’s Open in 2011, which was the first competition ever for eight female pilots.

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12.0% % female newcomers

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pilots

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Figure 8: Newcomers

Figure 9 shows the annual growth as a percentage of the previous year’s number of pilots, along with the number of pilots who entered the scene as newcomers, and the number of pilots who competed for the last time in that year. For the period from 2007 to 2010, the number of pilots grew steadily at a rate of about 5%. This was followed by negative growth both in 2011 and 2012, when obviously more pilots stopped competing than new ones started. The level of newcomers in 2011 and 2012 corresponds with that previously seen in 2005. The level of leaving pilots has been unprecedentedly high over the last three years.

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Figure 9: Pilot growth

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Paragliding Competitions over the Years 3.2.3

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Active Years

With the relatively high turnover we see so far, it is interesting to find out for how many years pilots compete actively. This is shown in Table 5 as well as in Figure 10: The vast majority of pilots are only active for a single year, only a relatively small group of 460 pilots, or 4%, has been active for ten or more years since 2001. On average a pilot is active for 2.94 years, the median (50% above, 50% below) lies at 2 years.

Number of active years

Number of pilots

Number of pilots active for x or more years

1

5377 (41%)

12963 (100%)

2

2444 (19%)

7586 (59%)

3

1474 (11%)

5142 (40%)

4

988 (8%)

3668 (28%)

5

722 (6%)

2680 (21%)

6

523 (4%)

1958 (15%)

7

405 (3%)

1435 (11%)

8

313 (2%)

1030 (8%)

9

257 (2%)

717 (6%)

10

188 (1%)

460 (4%)

11

133 (1%)

272 (2%)

12

139 (1%)

139 (1%)

Table 5: How many years are pilots active?

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active years Figure 10: Number of pilots for years of activity

3.3 Participations The key figures for participations are given in Table 6. The number of participations in 2012 is significantly below the average of the years 2006 to 2011. And this is due to the male pilots, participations of female pilots are higher than the 2006 to 2011 average, and make up 9% of all 29 April 2013

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participations, 1% more than the long-term average. In general, it can be said that the few women who compete do so in more competitions than their male counterparts: While the average pilot competed in exactly two competitions in 2012 (down from a 2.2 long-term average), the average female pilot participated in 2.4 competitions in 2012, which corresponds with the long-term average.

The average competition size (given as participations per competition) was also below the long-term average in 2012.

Average 2006-2011 Number of participations

2012

8542

7939

688 (8%)

747 (9%)

Participations / pilot

2.2

2.0

Participations / female pilot

2.4

2.4

Participations / competition

62.4

60.6

Number of female participations

Table 6: Participations in 2012

The development of participations over time is given in Figure 11. Similar to the number of competing pilots, it shows a peak in 2009, with 9473, from where it dropped to 7817 in 2011, and climbed back to 7939 in 2012, which corresponds with the level previously reached in 2006. Female participation remained much more stable over the last few years, peaking at 766 in 2009, to a low of 682 in 2011, and climbing back to 747 in 2012. Due to the considerable drop in male participations, the female percentage rose from 8% in 2010 to almost 9.5% in 2012.

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2012

Figure 11: Participation over time 3.3.1

Participations per Pilot

The development of average competitions per pilot is given in Figure 12. It also shows a peak in 2009, at 2.3, followed by a decline to just below 2.0 in 2011, from where it grew back to a bit above 2.0 in 2012. Female pilots on average compete consistently in more competitions than their male colleagues, peaking in 2009 at 2.6 competitions per pilot, from where it dropped to 2.1 in 2011, and grew back to 2.4 in 2012.

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3.0 2.5 2.0 1.5 1.0 participation/pilot

0.5

female participation per pilot

2001

2002

2003

2004

2005

2006

2007

2008

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2010

2011

2012

Figure 12: Participation per pilot

In Appendix B, Table B-3 shows the distribution of pilots over the different numbers of participations over the years. For 2012, this distribution is given in Figure 13. Of the 3906 competitors, 2126 competed only in a single competition. At the other end of the spectrum, there were 17 pilots who competed in ten or more competitions, including one pilot who competed in 13 competitions in 2012.

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participations in 2012 Figure 13: Number of pilots per number of participations in 2012

As Figure 14 shows, this distribution is not unusual – it corresponds quite well with the long-term data. The only noticeable difference between 2012 and the years before is a higher-than-average number of pilots who only compete in a single competition. In general, over 50% of all competitors each year participate in only one competition. The maximum of competitions in a single year flown by a single pilot is 16, in 2009.

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60% 50% % 2001-2011 40%

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participations Figure 14: Distribution of pilots (in % of total pilots) over number of participations

As shown Table 7 as well as in Figure 15, only 596 pilots, or 15%, participated in 2012 in four or more competitions, which is necessary to be well placed in the WPRS, where each pilot’s four best results count for their ranking. This is well below the peaks of 2008 and 2009, where 19% of all pilots competed in four or more competitions each year.

Average 2006-2011 Pilots

2012

3884

3906

Pilots with 2 or more participations per year

1959 (50%)

1780 (46%)

Pilots with 3 or more participations per year

1152 (30%)

982 (25%)

Pilots with 4 or more participations per year

681 (18%)

569 (15%)

Table 7: Number of pilots taking part in multiple competitions per year

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4500

25% % >=4 participations pilots >= 4 participations >=3 participations >=2 participations

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2012

Figure 15: Pilots taking part in multiple competitions per year

Table 8 and Figure 16 show the total number of competitions in which pilots participated throughout the whole period of 2001 to 2012. The majority of all pilots, 4653 of the 12963, or 36%, competed only in a single competition. The record is held by a pilot who has competed in 117 competitions to date. The average pilot participated in 6 competitions throughout his or her career. But the median is much lower, at 2 competitions, meaning that 50% of all pilots only competed in 1 or 2 competitions.

Number of participations

Number of pilots

Number of pilots participating in x or more competitions

1

4653 (36%)

12963 (100%)

2

2006 (15%)

8310 (64%)

3

1190 (9%)

6372 (48%)

4

782 (6%)

5164 (39%)

5

588 (5%)

4375 (33%)

6

465 (4%)

3772 (28%)

7

394 (3%)

3308 (25%)

8

352 (3%)

2912 (22%)

9

238 (2%)

2573 (19%)

10

213 (2%)

2325 (17%)

11

185 (1%)

2120 (16%)

12

166 (1%)

1921 (14%)

13

144 (1%)

1752 (13%)

14

131 (1%)

1604 (12%)

15

113 (1%)

1479 (11%)

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Number of participations

Number of pilots

Number of pilots participating in x or more competitions

16

110 (1%)

1356 (10%)

17

98 (1%)

1261 (9%)

18

95 (1%)

1161 (8%)

19

71 (1%)

1063 (7%)

20

76 (1%)

983 (7%)

21-117

1-59 (<1%)

904 (6%)

Table 8: How many competitions do pilots participate in?

The group of pilots who competed in 20 or more competitions counts 983 pilots, or 7%.

5000 4500 4000

number of pilots

3500 3000 2500 2000 1500 1000 500 1 4 7 10 13 16 19 22 25 28 31 34 37 40 43 46 49 52 55 58 61 64 67 70 73 77 85 117

0 participations 2001-2012 Figure 16: Number of pilots per number of participations in 2001-2012 3.3.2

Competition Size

The number of participations per competition tells us how many pilots on average competed in a competition in a given year. As shown in Table 6, the number of participations per competition in 2012 was 60.6, quite a bit below the average of 62.4 for the years 2006 to 2011. The distribution over the years is given in Figure 17.

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15%

70.0 60.0 50.0

10%

% growth participations per competition

40.0 30.0

5%

20.0 10.0 0.0

0%

-10.0 -20.0

-5%

-30.0 -40.0 -50.0 2001

-10% 2002

2003

2004

2005

2006

2007

2008

2009

2010

2011

2012

Figure 17: Participations per competition

If we consider that in 2012, the number of competitions dropped, but the number of participations rose slightly (see also Figure 20), it is only logical that the average number of competitors per competition rose as well. In economic terms, one could say that after a short decline, demand for competitions rose again in 2012, but with the decreasing supply in competitions, the existing competitions managed to draw a higher number of competitors than in the years before.

Figure 18 shows the different competition sizes, and how many such competitions took place in 2012. More than half (74) of the 131 competitions which submitted tasks had 60 or less participants.

At the other end of the spectrum, only 23 competitions, less than 20%, had 100 or more competitors.

35 30 number of competitions

25 20 15 10 5 0 <20

21-40

41-60

61-80

81-100

101-120

121-140

141-160

number of competitors in competition Figure 18: Distribution of competition sizes in 2012

Figure 19 shows how 2012 compares in competition sizes with the years 2001 through 2011. The most obvious difference is the much smaller numbers of competitions with 120 and more competitors. The shrinking attendance numbers in the World Cup certainly played a role here: In 29 April 2013

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2012, only two of the six PWC events saw fields of more than 120 pilots. On the other hand, we see an increase in the competitions with between 101 and 120 pilots â&#x20AC;&#x201C; thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s where the remaining four PWC events of 2012 placed. Also, the fraction of very small competitions with less than 20 competitors grew in 2012.

25% 2012 20%

2001-2011

15%

10%

5%

0% <20

21-40

41-60

61-80

81-100

101-120

121-140

141-160

number of competitors in competition Figure 19: Distribution of competitions (in % of total competitions) over number of pilots

3.4 Overall View Finally, we look at the combination of the three topics above: competitions, competitors and participations. Figure 20 shows the development of those three indicators over time, given in relation to the 2006 baseline. We can see that of the three values, the pilot and competition number seem to be clearly coupled: The more competitions, the more competitors, and as soon as the number of competitions drop, the competitor numbers do the same. Interestingly, the number of participations drops off before the two other values, and shows a first decline already in 2010.

140% competitions 135% 130%

pilots participations

125% 120% 115% 110% 105% 100% 2006

2007

2008

2009

2010

2011

2012

Figure 20: Competitions, pilots and participations

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4 Conclusions Part 1 From the information above, I draw a series of conclusions:

4.1 Conclusion 1: Ours is a small but competitive world Two studies by the Paraglider Manufacturers Association (PMA) counted 101’000 active paraglider pilots in 2009 and 98’120 in 20103. Since no newer figures exist, we assume a global paraglider pilot population of 100’000. Of those 100’000 pilots, 3906 competed in a paragliding cross-country competition that was sanctioned as an FAI Category 2 event by CIVL – that’s about 4% of the total pilot population. Of those 3906, only 569, about 0.6% of the total pilot population, participated in four or more events, showing ambitions for a good ranking in the World Pilot Ranking System. But while these numbers may seem low, if we compare them with other, more mainstream sports, we find that the percentage of paraglider pilots involved in international competitions is relatively high, see Table 9. For example, if we had the same percentage of international competitors as skiing, we would only see 10 pilots compete internationally every year.

One explanation for this high share of competition pilots is that international paragliding competitions are often seen as an inexpensive form of a guided flying vacation. Many pilots participate under this aspect in, for example, the British or Nordic Opens, or other national championships. But their commitment level would not qualify them as international competitors in other sports.

Skiing Participants worldwide International competitors 2012 Percentage

Tennis

110 Million4 ~50 Million5

Paragliding

Paragliding >4 competitions

~100’000

~100’000

12’1196

31877

3906

569

0.01%

0.01%

3.90%

0.57%

Table 9: Comparison of international competitor numbers

Nevertheless, looking at those figures, I can’t help but wonder whether the absolute or relative numbers of pilots in question justify the amount of time, resources and regulatory power that has been brought upon our sport by national associations, associations of national associations, and manufacturer associations, in any reasonable way. On the one hand, we should probably feel honoured, as a group, to be awarded so much “management attention”. On the other hand, I have the feeling that all those hours spent by people with not much connection to the active international competition world, discussing competitions and figuring out ways to change them, could be spent much more productively on other topics, to the benefit of a broader pilot population.

3

http://www.p-m-a.info/english/welcome/news.html - “PMA Paragliding Market Study” http://www.vanat.ch/RM-world-report-2011.pdf, p12 5 A very rough estimate. No information on global tennis player numbers could be found. The estimate is based on the US market, for which varying sources give numbers between 12.5 and 30 Million. For this estimate, the lowest of these values was quadrupled. At any rate, the number will be of the correct magnitude.

6 The International Ski Federation (FIS) lists 12119 competitors in their FIS points list valid for the end of 2012 (http://www.fis-ski.com/uk/604/607.html?sector=AL&listid=190).

7 st ATP (men) 1983 + WTA (women) 1204=3187 as of December 31 2012 4

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4.2 Conclusion 2: Ours is not a sticky world Of the 12963 pilots who competed in the 2001 to 2012 period, 5377 (41%) did so for only a single season. 4691(36%) of them even participated in only a single competition. The number of newcomers is compensated every year by roughly the same number of people leaving the international competition arena. The number of long-time competitors, active for a decade or longer, only makes up for about 10% of the annual competitors.

This all clearly shows: Most pilots do not stick around. It would appear that the effort required for having a long-lasting international competition career is more than most pilots are willing to put up with. Participating in one’s national championship is one thing, but even that seems to be more of a “once in a lifetime” than a “once a year” event for many pilots. Participating in four or more competitions, and therefore competing for top ranking in the WPRS, is done by only about 15% of all competitors.

A possible explanation for this is that a few long-term competitors, due to their experience, fly at a much higher level than newcomers. This makes it hard for those newcomers to break into competition and to stay motivated long enough to get to the top level themselves. Other sports resolve this by having a large number of competitions targeted at different levels, with competitive qualification to the higher levels and easier conditions at the lower levels. This is probably an area where large competition associations like CIVL and PWCA could become active to help improve the outlook of our sport.

4.3 Conclusion 3: Everything is connected The more competitions there are, the more pilots compete and are ranked in the WPRS. The more pilots compete, the higher the number of pilots who compete more than once a year, who start on a path towards a long-lasting international career. And the more competitors exist, the more organizers find themselves who organize competitions. On the other hand, as soon as the number of competitions drops, the number of competitors follows suit. Or the other way around, if competitors stay away, competitions will not be profitable and organizers will stop organizing them in the following years.

4.4 Conclusion 4: Something happened in 2011 The figures and tables shown above display a relatively small, but steady growth for the period between 2006 and 2010. This changes quite dramatically in 2011, and does not recover much, if at all, in 2012. Obviously, paragliding competitions are going through a phase of crisis right now, the first since 2001, if not longer. There is probably no single cause for this development. In the following section, I look more into this recent drop, and its possible causes.

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5 Further Investigations A number of theories have been brought up as possible explanations for the crisis mentioned in section 4.4. Here, I postulate the four I heard mentioned most often, as hypothesis, and then try to support or dispel them subsequently.

• • •

•

H1: Bad weather is responsible for the decline. This resulted in a decrease of interest in competitions.

H2: The global economic situation discourages pilots from participating in international competitions.

H3: Competitions have become increasingly inaccessible, not the least due to the wings being flown in them. The introduction of the new 2-line technology aggravated this problem and lead to a decline of pilot interest.

H4: The accidents in Piedrahita during the 2011 World Championships, followed by the suspension of Competition Class wings by CIVL, which was replicated by many national associations, had an impact on the key numbers discussed in this report.

5.1 Weather Bad weather leads to cancelled tasks. To my knowledge, the only other factor in our sport – apart from a suspension of our wings, of course – that consistently leads to task cancellations are rescue operations along the course line. But from my experience, these lead to far fewer cancellations than bad weather. So for the purpose of this study, we assume that if an individual task is cancelled, it’s due to bad weather.

If all tasks of a competition are cancelled, the competition will be cancelled; no results will be submitted to the WPRS. But the same – no results submitted to the WPRS – can also happen if the competition is cancelled for other reasons, for instance due to lack of registered pilots, financial problems on the organizer’s side, or political reasons.

So in order to isolate the effects of weather on task numbers, a distinction between cancelled tasks and cancelled competitions is required. Only cancelled tasks of competitions which submitted a result can be exclusively attributed to bad weather (considering the restriction regarding rescue operations mentioned above). Figure 21 takes this into account when calculating the percentage of tasks that were cancelled due to bad weather. The investigated period spans from 2006 to 2012. For the time before 2006, calculating planned task numbers from competition dates is difficult since at that time competitions could include multiple events.

On average, 34% of all tasks had to be cancelled due to bad weather. From 2006 to 2008, the actual percentage lies below this average, whereas it rises steadily above average from 2009 to 2011, a year of exceptionally bad weather for competitions it would seem. 2012, in turn, is back to the level of 2008.

Given these numbers, it could be imagined that the three worse-than-average years 2009, 2010 and 2011 resulted in more pilots becoming frustrated with and quitting the competition scene, and fewer organizers willing to put the effort into organizing a competition.

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40% 35% 30% 25% 20% 15% %task cancelled due to weather average

10% 5% 0% 2006

2007

2008

2009

2010

2011

2012

Figure 21: Tasks cancelled due to bad weather

5.2 Economy â&#x20AC;&#x201C; and some more on weather Measuring the effects of any economic development on paragliding competitions would be very hard given the data available. But if direct measuring is not possible, sometimes itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s possible to compare with something similar. Fortunately, there exists a sport that offers itself quite naturally as a benchmark: Hang gliding. Competitions in hang gliding work almost identically to those in paragliding, they attract a similar clientele, and they operate under very much the same economic constraints, if only at a slightly increased scale due to higher costs for equipment and transportation.

To understand the following figures, it is important to consider that the absolute numbers in hang gliding are considerably lower than in paragliding (see Appendix B for the raw data used here).

Therefore, a small change in the number of pilots, for example, will result in much more pronounced differences in the relative values. An individual competition or competitor in hang gliding counts for more than in paragliding in those graphs.

Figure 22 shows that the number of competitions for hang gliding and paragliding grew at comparable rates from 2006 to 2009. Hang gliding competitions declined in 2010, but increased again both in 2011 and 2012 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; those years when paragliding competitions declined for the first time ever.

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140% 135% 130%

paragliding

125%

hang gliding

120% 115% 110% 105% 100% 2006

2007

2008

2009

2010

2011

2012

Figure 22: Competition numbers compared

Interestingly, unlike in paragliding, the hang gliding pilot numbers do not follow the competition numbers, as can be seen in Figure 23. Hang gliding experienced a dip in pilot numbers both in 2008, when paragliding still was growing, and in 2011, along with paragliding. 2012 marked the year with the highest number of hang gliding competitors to date â&#x20AC;&#x201C; also very unlike paragliding.

135% 130% paragliding 125% hang gliding 120% 115% 110% 105% 100% 2006

2007

2008

2009

2010

2011

2012

Figure 23: Pilot numbers compared

Another difference between the two sports can be seen in Figure 24: Whereas the participations in hang gliding competitions very much followed development in pilot numbers, the same cannot be said about paragliding. Participation in paragliding competition drops off already in 2010, before the decline in both competitions and pilots in 2011. In hang gliding, after a dip in 2011, participation increased again in 2012 to the highest number to date.

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170% 160% paragliding 150% hang gliding 140% 130% 120% 110% 100% 2006

2007

2008

2009

2010

2011

2012

Figure 24: Participation numbers compared

If the decline in competitions and competitors had been mainly driven by the economic situation, I would have expected a much closer similarity between hang gliding and paragliding in their relative development over the past few years. This is not the case, leading to the conclusion that H2 cannot be confirmed.

But letâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s return to the weather for a moment. Hang gliding pilots suffer from the same, so how did the phase from 2006 to 2012 look for them in terms of cancelled tasks? Figure 25 shows that in general, hang gliding tasks are less likely to be cancelled due to weather (probably because hang gliders can launch in and cope with higher wind speeds than paragliders), but nevertheless, they also experienced a very bad year in 2011, the only one significantly worse than the long-term average.

But that does not yet explain why the competition and pilot numbers in paragliding remained in their downward cycle in 2012, whereas hang gliding figures climbed that year.

Another thing that is interesting to see in Figure 25: After the accidents in Piedrahita, and the many discussions on the danger of competition wings, and paragliding competitions in general, one could have assumed that meet directors in paragliding competitions would be much more inclined to cancelling tasks which they usually, before Piedrahita, would have let run. Incidental evidence to that point: The Swiss Paragliding League cancelled their last training weekend in 2011 due to concerns about pilot safety. But in general, if that assumption were true, weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d see a different picture here, one where more paragliding tasks than hang gliding tasks (which were likely unaffected by the whole safety discussion in paragliding) were cancelled in 2011. This not being the case, we can assume that paragliding meet directors continued doing a great job and only cancelled tasks when and where it was called for.

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45% 40% 35% 30% 25% 20% 15%

% cancelled for weather PG % cancelled for weather HG

10%

average PG

5%

average HG

0% 2006

2007

2008

2009

2010

2011

2012

Figure 25: Effect of weather on tasks

5.3 Accessibility If we look closely at the number of newcomers over the past eleven years, we see that the peak, with 1234 new pilots, coincides with the year when the 2-line technology first became commercially available. This was also the second biggest relative growth since 2001. If these new wings didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t attract more new pilots, then they also obviously didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t drive them away. Up to the world championships in July of 2011, the general perception was still that 2-liner wings, including the newly released second generation, were a great step forward, and were more accessible than previous generations of competition wings. But after a first season, an often-voiced sentiment was that competing with top pilots on their top wings has become less fun for newcomers (who usually fly lower-performance wings) due to the increased performance gap. The sudden drop of almost 25% of the expected newcomers in 2011 may be attributed to this sentiment.

1'300

30% 20%

650 10% -

0% -10%

-650 -20%

% annual growth newcomers

-30%

-1'300 2002

2003

2004

2005

2006

2007

2008

2009

2010

2011

2012

Figure 26: Newcomers, and their growth

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From 2012, all major competitions, including the World Cup, as well as the majority of other Category 2 events, required EN certified wings. These are the wings which have a reputation especially amongst the supporters of such a certification requirement for competition wings, of being safer and more accessible than open class wings. Predictions were that the number of newcomers would rise, when all those pilots who didn’t want to fly an open class wing would finally join the international competition scene and be competitive. Surprisingly, this did not happen, the number of newcomers stayed as low in 2012 as it had been in 2011.

An explanation for this may be that from the potential newcomers, both open class pilots (because they were no longer allowed to fly their wings) and pilots of certified wings (because they felt that their wing wouldn’t be competitive against the newest generation of certified competition wings) were discouraged from starting to compete. Especially pilots who formerly used to start out with an EN-D certified wing, but got ranked in a separate Serial Class ranking, found themselves in an unfortunate situation: Either step down to an EN-C wing to be ranked in a class apart from the top pilots with their competition wings. Or stick to EN-D, but then be either outclassed by better pilots and wings. Or start flying such a certified competition wing as well, something that generally is not recommended at the outset of a competition career.

So I think it’s safe to conclude that the indeed did the introduction of the new glider technology in 2010 contribute to a drop in newcomers in 2011. Not because those wings were less accessible, but because the performance gap between those wings and classic EN-D wings had become too big. On the other hand, making EN-D certification mandatory for most major competitions did not reverse this trend; the situation remained unchanged in 2012. But in combination with the realization that most pilots only dip their toes into the competition pond once or twice before moving on, this indicates to me that there is indeed support for H3.

5.4 Piedrahita – and some more on economics Can the decline in the key figures be attributed to “Piedrahita”, the accidents, the suspended competition class wings, the stopped world championship and all the discussions that ensued? To find that out, I looked at the three key indicators: Number of competitions, number of participations, and number of competitors. For the first two, I determined the monthly values, and then added up twelve-month periods. For the competitor numbers, I also looked at twelve-month periods, to determine the total number of individual competitors for each such period.

For each of these series, I calculated the monthly growth rate, in relation to the previous month.

Finally, to remove seasonal effects, I calculated a sliding average, taking into account the past 12 months. A value of 1% therefore means that the indicator in question grew with 1% from month to month on average over the past 12 months. Changes that can be attributed to a singular event become visible as a sudden increase or decrease from one month to another.

The results of this analysis can be found in Figure 27 for paragliding and Figure 28 for hang gliding.

Looking at those two graphics, a number of things stand out: 1. The three indicators run in sync most of the time. For hang gliding, there was a period in late 2008/early 2009 when this was not the case: The number of competitions grew, but the number of competitors and participation declined. In paragliding a similar phenomenon can be observed for the second half of 2010, and early 2011: Participation was lower than 12 months prior, but competitors and competitions higher.

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2. For the past few years, hang gliding went through cycles of growth and reduction, with each cycle lasting about 12 to 16 months and with the growth phases being more pronounced.

The last downward cycle started in late 2010 and lasted until early 2012. In paragliding, a similar downwards cycle seems to be starting at around the same time (after a prolonged period of shrinking participation), but has not come to an end yet.

3. The cycles can be seen more clearly in Figure 29, where I added up the three values for each month, and smoothed the curve for more clarity. Note especially how the drop below 0 coincides for the both curves at the end of 2010.

4. The months when FAI-1 competitions occur leave a dent for paragliding, and then a peak again 12 months later. See July 2008/2009 (European Championships Nis), May 2010/2011 (European Championships Abtenau) and July 2011/2012 (World Championships Piedrahita).

This can be explained by the fact that during, and often just before and after such events, fewer FAI-2 competitions take place. This then in turn increases the relative growth a year later, when everything goes back to normal. The 2009 World Championships in Valle de Bravo do not exhibit this due to the small number of competitions usually held in January/February.

5. Looking at the last two years in paragliding in more detail, we see that all three indicators had started to drop by March 2011. This trend was shortly distorted in May and June due to the effect described above (Europeans 2010), and the fact that many organizers squeezed their competitions into June when normally they would have run them in July (for example, up from 29 competitions in 2010 to 39 in 2011). In July, they dropped significantly, as could be expected, when besides the World Championships in Piedrahita only 18 FAI-2 competitions took place (compared to 30 in 2010). In August and September, the numbers recover slightly, again as would be expected, to compensate for July. But over the following ten months, we see dropping figures in seven. The last drop, in June 2012, exists because June 2012 was back to â&#x20AC;&#x153;normalâ&#x20AC;? with 26 competitions. From then on, we see stabilization at a low level for competitors and participation that will hopefully turn into growth again in 2013. The number of competitions on the other hand kept shrinking until October 2012, where we count only 158 competitions in the twelve prior months. The last time this number had been as low was exactly four years earlier, in October 2008.

What to make of these observations? With the monthly view, some parallels between hang gliding and paragliding become obvious that had not been discernible before. I think it is safe to conclude that in 2011, pilots in both sports reduced their level of involvement. This could have been due to the weather â&#x20AC;&#x201C; but 2010 had not been a bad year for hang gliding. Which leaves economic factors as a potential culprit, and I think H2 can be considered at least partially supported by these findings.

But unlike hang gliding, paragliding did not recover by late 2011, on the contrary: The numbers just kept on dropping, eroding away most of the growth our sport has seen over the past 5 years. And I believe it is sound to assume that Piedrahita and its aftermath play a crucial role in this: The two months immediately after Piedrahita were not much affected: competitions had been organized, paid for, and pilots tried to cope with the situation as much as possible. Nevertheless, cases are known where pilots opted to not switch to an EN-D wing for their national championships at last minute as early as August. This all became more pronounced as organizers had time to cancel competitions, and pilots had time to decide against signing up for the ones that still took place.

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Jan 08

29 April 2013 Okt 12 Nov 12 Dez 12

Aug 12 Sep 12

Mai 12 Jun 12 Jul 12

Mrz 12 Apr 12

Dez 11 Jan 12 Feb 12

Okt 11 Nov 11

Jul 11 Aug 11 Sep 11

Mai 11 Jun 11

Feb 11 Mrz 11 Apr 11

Dez 10 Jan 11

Okt 10 Nov 10

% annual change competitions

Jul 10 Aug 10 Sep 10

Mai 10 Jun 10

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1.50%

Dez 09 Jan 10

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-1.00%

Apr 08 Mai 08 Jun 08

Feb 08 Mrz 08

Paragliding Competitions over the Years Edition 2013

2.00%

Paragliding

1.00%

0.50%

0.00%

-0.50%

% annual change competitions

% annual change participations

-2.00% % annual change competitors

Figure 27: Annual change over 12 month periods for paragliding 4%

% annual change participations

Hang Gliding

% annual change competitors

1%

0%

-1%

-2%

-3%

Figure 28: Annual change over 12 month periods for hang gliding

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hang gliding

Figure 29: Growth of competitions, competitors and participations, combined and smoothed, 2008-2012

Out of curiosity, I drew the curves from Figure 29 for the whole set of data available, from 2001 to 2012. In the resulting Figure 30, we see that from 2004 to 2008, paragliding also went through very regular cycles of more or less growth, similar to the ones we see in hang gliding from 2009. This is something to probably explore more in a future edition of this report.

paragliding hang gliding

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Figure 30: Growth of competitions, competitors and participations, combined and smoothed, 2002-2012

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6 Conclusions Part 2 After having gone over the data a second time, in more detail, and having compared paragliding competitions with hang gliding competitions, did any of my initial conclusions change? Yes and no. I still uphold the first three conclusions: Ours is a small, competitive but not very sticky world where everything is connected. But before looking at reasons for the observed downturn, let’s briefly look at it the fourth conclusion from a different angle:

6.1 Crisis or Normal?

In section 4.4 I concluded that paragliding competitions seem to be going through a crisis. Is that really so, or did the sport simply surpass its prime, and is now on its natural path towards an equilibrium at a lower level? Is it possible that paragliding as a whole is no longer growing, and that this effect has now caught up with competitions?

I do not think so, and maintain that what we observe is indeed a crisis. Unfortunately, we do not have reliable figures for pilots world-wide except for the years 2009 and 2010. But one of the bigger contributors to the roughly 100’000 pilots, the Swiss association (SHV) saw a steady growth in membership numbers over the past few years, which makes me doubt that the overall number was much higher than 100’000 before 2009, or much lower in the years since then. Additionally, all the figures available indicated to me a healthy environment up to 2010, with no sign of saturation.

But whatever happened that caused the downturn, it didn’t happen exclusively in 2011. There were multiple factors at play, some of them starting already a few years earlier.

6.2 Causes As shown above, I was able to find arguments supporting all four of the hypothesis formulated at the outset of this investigation at least partially. On the other hand, I could not find anything that would dispel them. What seems most likely for me by now is that the crisis we are currently observing in paragliding competitions is an effect of multiple causes, both “internal” and “external” ones.

6.2.1

External Causes

I consider the following as external factors to the system of international paragliding competitions: 1. The economic downturn caused pilots to reduce the time and money they dedicate to paragliding competitions 2. Increasingly bad weather from 2009 to 2011, causing higher-than-average task cancellation, lead to an increasing number of frustrated pilots who quit the scene. In parallel, some people who had been observing competitions with the idea in mind of joining eventually may have decided against that since from their perspective competitions are not so much fun after all.

3. The aftermath of Piedrahita had three effects of its own: a. Organizers became concerned regarding safety and liability, and some of them cancelled their competitions, or decided to no longer run them in the following year. b. The widely publicised discussion about safety made pilots reconsider their involvement with the sport, which caused some to give up competing internationally, and others, who would have started otherwise, to stay away. c. The suspension of competition class wings, which was adapted by most FAI Category 2 competitions, made those competitions less attractive for three pilot groups:

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Paragliding Competitions over the Years

Edition 2013

i. A group of very active competition pilots, who formerly flew competition class wings, but decided to leave the scene rather than switching to an EN certified wing. This includes pilots who were not able to find EN certified wings matching their body weight. ii. A group of very active competitions pilots who used to compete in the serial class on EN-D wings. Rather than stepping down to the sports class flown with EN-C wings, or stepping up to a new EN-D competition wing, or flying against such wings on lower-performing wings, they quit. iii. A group of potential newcomers who traditionally would have flown their first competitions on classic EN-D wings, in the serial class, but were facing the same problems as group ii. above, and decided to not enter the competition scene for now.

Whether or not the third point is indeed an external one could probably be argued. My position is that it’s not something that is part of the normal way the competition world usually runs year after year, which makes it an external cause.

6.2.2

Internal Causes

Causes for the downturn we’re currently observing which are part of the inner workings of the international competition system: 1. The fewer pilots participate in competitions in general, the less attractive it becomes for organizers to organize competitions. This because the pilots’ entry fees are usually the biggest income position in an organizer’s books. But other factors may be at play. After all, the majority of organizers set up competitions not with the goal of making money, but to do something for paragliding, and paragliding pilots.

2. The fewer competitions exist, the fewer pilots compete. Especially pilots who only compete once or twice a year seem to only do so if a competition takes place within their geographic vicinity (material for further investigations, maybe in a future edition of this report). If those competitions do not happen, these pilots do not compete.

3. The fewer pilots compete, the lower are participation numbers.

4. The gap between newcomers and experienced pilots is increasing: A small group of competitors has been competing for 10 or more years. These pilots evolved to an experience level that is hard to match for most newcomers, which discourages those newcomers from sticking to competitions long enough to get to this level themselves. Technical advancements in wing design aggravated this development even further, by making it harder to keep up with the top pilots while flying a lower-performing wing. Paragliding misses the clear progression in international competitions that would lead to competing at the top level over several steps where pilots of similar skills compete against each other.

6.3 Remedies We could of course leave everything as it is, and hope for the best. Or even consider the observed crisis part of a healthy process to shrink the sport to a more manageable size. But personally, I am

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Paragliding Competitions over the Years

Edition 2013

convinced that growth in competitions is desirable, and should be encouraged and nurtured in any way possible8.

We concluded that multiple factors are responsible for the crisis in paragliding competitions.

Similarly, there is no single action that will mend it all and put the international competition scene back to onto a path of growth and prosperity. Additionally, our possibilities to influence both the global economic and meteorological situation are probably too limited. But the third external factor is certainly something where especially CIVL is in a good position to improve the situation: 1. Clarify the safety and liability issues surrounding the suspension of competition class gliders.

Many pilots, organizers and officials are still waiting for an official resolution of the “temporary suspension of competition class wings”, to learn whether the switch to EN D did actually improve safety in competitions.

2. Clarify the legal side of competitions in general. The discussion of the potential liability hazards an organizer or organizing association may be exposed to due to various things, choice of permitted gliders being one of them, is to date mainly based on legal superstition, hearsay and personal opinions. Debunking all those myths surrounding competitions and providing sound legal recommendations grounded on facts to all involved stakeholders would go a long way towards ensuring that our scene can grow again.

3. Bring stability into the wing discussion. This is something CIVL is currently working on.

I see these three as medium-term activities.

There is nothing that can influence internal factors directly: they are just inherent to the competition world. But there may be ways to changing the current trends.

1. In the long term, maybe in collaboration with the PWCA, CIVL should rethink the current two-tier system of international competitions, and consider introducing levels within the FAI Category 2 competitions. This with the goal of offering newcomer competitors a clear career outline, and prevent them from becoming frustrated and leaving again after only a few competitions where the gap in skills and experience between them and the top pilots was too big.

2. In the short term, the main goal should be to increase the number of competitions. This in turn will have positive effects on competitor and participation numbers. Therefore, I’d like to encourage every organizer who reads this to please put up a competition this year. If CIVL has any means for motivating organizers, apart from the three points mentioned above, I’d highly recommend applying those means as soon as possible, if only by reducing the sanctioning fee for the time being.

8

This conviction is rooted in my personal experience: I had already been flying for 10 years when I started to compete. My main motivation at that time was to improve my skills, to become a better cross-country pilot.

And this has worked far beyond what I would have imagined then. Competitions, to me, are the best possible learning environment for any aspiring cross-country pilot: A controlled environment where many of the uncertainties and dangers of individual cross-country flying are removed by design, and where progress is much quicker due to the presence of other pilots and the immediate feedback on one’s performance.

The more competitions there are the more pilots can profit from this learning environment and become better, safer pilots, which in turn is to the benefit of paragliding as a whole.

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Paragliding Competitions over the Years

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And ultimately, itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s up to us, the individual pilots: We have it in our hands to either let the competition scene grow again, or leave it dwindling. If you have been toying with the idea of joining a competition, now would be a perfect time to sign up. Have fun with it, and Happy Landing!

Šazoom.ch

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37

Paragliding Competitions over the Years â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Appendix A: Methodology

Edition 2013

Appendix A: Methodology My goal was to create a document that is easy to understand even without any in-depth knowledge in statistics. But for completeness sake, this appendix shows the way I went about creating the charts and tables in the remainder of the report.

A.1 Data Source This whole report is based on the database behind CIVLâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s World Pilot Ranking System9 (WPRS). The WPRS contains two categories of competitions: 1. FAI Category 1 competitions: World and continental championships. Each year between one and three such competitions take place in paragliding.

2. FAI Category 2 competitions: International competitions which applied for and were granted sanctioning by CIVL. The vast majority of international paragliding competitions fall into this category.

The WPRS applies a three-year sliding window for its ranking: Pilots are ranked according to their four best results over the last 36 months. Individual results are devalued over time, dropping to 0 points after 36 months. Pilots with a total score of 0 are no longer ranked.

The WPRS database dates back to 2001. For this report, all entries concerning FAI Category 2 cross country paragliding competitions that started after January 1st, 2001, and ended before December 31st, 2012, were considered. The raw data was retrieved through SQL statements; the outcome was then processed and charted in Excel. The raw data used to create this report is presented in Appendix A. The SQL statements used to generate this data is presented in Appendix C.

A.2 Statistics Only a few very basic mathematical concepts were used to create this report. Mainly I needed to count entries and occurrences; in some cases a simple average was required. The most sophisticated operation used here is a twelve-month sliding average over monthly values: For each month, add up the values of the past year, and divide the result by twelve.

To determine the number of planned tasks for each competition, I counted the number of days the organizer had indicated, including the first and last day. While this is not always accurate (some competitions use the first official competition day for training and registration), this probably still results in a sufficiently precise approximation. If a competition submitted more tasks than the dates indicated originally, the higher value was used instead.

A proper statistical analysis of the data would have been appropriate especially for the last part of this study, to determine the degree to which some of the involved indicators do in fact correlate. I admit I shied away from that effort, and resorted to a simple discussion of the resulting graphs. This is certainly not sound from a scientific stand point, but I feel that the conclusions I draw nevertheless stand on solid ground.

9

civlrankings.fai.org

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Paragliding Competitions over the Years – Appendix A: Methodology

Edition 2013

A.3 Definitions The terms used throughout this report are defined in Table A-1.

Term

Definition

Competition Competitor or pilot

FAI Category 2 paragliding cross country competition 10

Any person (male or female) who competed in at least one competition between January 1, 2001, and December 31, 2012

Participation

The event of an individual pilot participating in an individual competition

Active competitor or pilot

A pilot who competed in at least one competition in 2012

Ranked competitor or pilot

A pilot who was ranked in the WPRS edition 2013-01-01, in other words a pilot who competed in at least one competition in 2010, 2011 or 2012

Inactive competitor or pilot

A pilot who did not compete in any competition in 2012

Unranked competitor or pilot

A pilot who did not compete in any competition in 2010, 2011 and 2012

Newcomer

A pilot who competed for the first time in 2012 (ignoring potential participations before 2001)

Table A-1: Definitions

10

Note that the WPRS uses “pilot” in a very loose sense. For instance, in the competition overview, the value “no of pilots last 12 months” actually refers to participations, not pilots.

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39

Paragliding Competitions over the Years â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Appendix B: Raw data

Edition 2013

Appendix B: Raw data competitions 2001

38

-

tasks planned 226

2'589

female participations 200

-

-

newcomers 1'526

2002

48

-

198

198

184

1'981

125

3'226

236

2'640

175

1'137

68

2003

53

-

328

328

225

2004

75

-

416

416

276

2'066

148

2'529

163

3'655

298

3'548

237

875

61

4'804

382

4'033

255

977

54

2005

70

-

377

377

262

2'741

190

5'042

403

4'410

295

944

76

2006

133

18

623

571

383

3'444

235

7'743

579

5'087

345

1'189

83

2007

152

26

684

600

413

3'731

268

8'079

623

5'621

418

1'153

108

2008

162

21

742

655

450

3'916

299

9'026

730

6'144

463

1'046

94

2009

179

29

802

731

481

4'044

296

9'473

766

6'107

448

1'013

85

2010

186

29

813

748

483

4'219

308

9'115

745

6'191

466

1'234

94

2011

39

762

641

398

3'947

318

7'817

682

5'915

469

932

101

2012 162 31 Table B-1: Raw annual data paragliding

175

707

605

416

3'906

312

7'939

747

6'895

533

937

70

tasks planned where flown 250

tasks flown 130

pilots

female ranked

1319

female participations 93

ranked

779

female pilots 46

female newcomers 46

competitions

competitions with 0 tasks

competitions with 0 tasks

tasks planned where flown 226

tasks flown 147

pilots 1'526

female pilots 104

participations

2001

29

-

tasks planned 250

participations

2002

32

-

216

216

155

1014

46

1441

2003

35

-

330

330

173

961

40

2004

26

-

160

160

108

795

2005

29

-

226

226

122

2006

46

13

266

200

2007

46

12

262

208

2008

52

15

270

2009

59

9

2010

57

2011 2012

ranked

female ranked

female newcomers 104

-

-

newcomers 779

76

1353

62

562

13

1422

64

1709

72

348

10

40

1159

58

1706

76

230

13

785

42

1130

65

1568

70

209

12

139

833

35

1305

60

1451

69

199

7

158

879

35

1421

64

1447

60

187

4

214

157

839

35

1381

71

1410

57

173

4

320

292

203

1004

39

1886

107

1450

54

238

6

9

338

293

201

1068

48

2028

109

1514

59

231

15

58

10

336

289

176

985

44

1707

77

1469

67

177

12

61

5

326

311

219

1078

44

2062

95

1678

70

163

2

Table B-2: Raw annual data hang gliding

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40

Paragliding Competitions over the Years â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Appendix B: Raw data participations

2001

2002

2003

2004

Edition 2013

2005

2006

2007

2008

2009

2010

2011

2012

1

996

1332

1333

1445

1607

1713

1874

1832

1857

2132

2139

2126

2

300

371

334

528

574

662

786

854

851

863

826

798

3

88

117

178

247

265

417

445

471

554

494

448

413

4

57

78

100

154

136

300

271

347

311

331

253

250

5

35

40

63

63

74

133

166

139

192

172

142

144

6

32

22

26

50

43

92

79

113

126

101

72

77

7

12

16

15

23

26

51

40

72

63

73

33

43

8

4

3

10

8

8

37

36

35

37

26

18

27

9

2

1

6

6

6

19

14

22

19

16

9

11

1

1

3

2

10

11

17

16

4

5

10

7

4

11

5

5

2

5

12

2

4

3

5

1

1

13

1

1

1

10 11

2

6

0

14

0

0

15

1

1

16

1

Table B-3: Number of PG pilots per annual number of participations

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Paragliding Competitions over the Years â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Appendix B: Raw data

Edition 2013

participations

number of pilots

participations

number of pilots

1

4653

44

11

2

2006

45

9

3

1190

46

14

4

782

47

10

5

588

48

8

6

465

49

7

7

394

50

9

8

352

51

11

9

238

52

3

10

213

53

6

11

185

54

4

12

166

55

4

13

144

56

6

14

131

57

3

15

113

58

1

16

110

59

5

17

98

60

3

18

95

61

5

19

71

62

3

20

76

63

1

21

59

64

3

22

57

65

3

23

49

66

4

24

48

67

2

25

52

68

2

26

49

69

1

27

45

70

2

28

42

71

2

29

43

72

1

30

33

73

1

31

32

74

2

32

35

76

2

33

23

77

4

34

17

79

2

35

18

82

1

36

20

85

1

37

18

92

1

38

20

94

1

39

9

40

23

41

10

42

18

43

14

29 April 2013

117 1 Table B-4: Number of PG pilots per total number of participations

42

Paragliding Competitions over the Years â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Appendix B: Raw data

Edition 2013

number of pilots

number of comps

number of pilots

number of comps

6

1

60

2

7

1

61

2

8

1

62

1

10

1

63

1

11

1

65

1

13

2

67

1

15

1

69

4

16

2

71

4

18

1

73

2

19

1

75

2

20

1

77

1

21

2

79

1

22

1

81

2

23

3

83

2

25

2

84

3

27

1

86

1

29

1

87

1

30

2

90

2

32

2

94

2

33

4

96

1

34

1

101

2

36

3

102

1

37

4

104

1

38

2

105

2

39

1

107

1

40

1

109

1

41

2

110

1

42

3

111

1

43

1

112

1

44

1

117

1

45

5

119

2

46

1

120

3

47

1

123

1

48

1

126

1

49

1

132

1

51

3

134

1

52

1

140

1

53

1

54

1

55

5

57

1

58

1

29 April 2013

150 1 Table B-5: Number of competitions in 2012 per number of participants

43

Paragliding Competitions over the Years â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Appendix B: Raw data

Edition 2013

number of pilots

number of comps

number of pilots

number of comps

3

2

50

15

5

1

51

13

7

2

52

11

8

4

53

16

9

7

54

13

10

6

55

9

11

7

56

9

12

3

57

15

13

7

58

9

14

5

59

8

15

7

60

9

16

4

61

8

17

9

62

14

18

8

63

12

19

11

64

10

20

9

65

10

21

8

66

13

22

14

67

9

23

14

68

8

24

9

69

9

25

5

70

14

26

10

71

8

27

12

72

4

28

14

73

9

29

15

74

8

30

15

75

8

31

14

76

5

32

19

77

10

33

12

78

6

34

17

79

3

35

9

80

6

36

13

81

9

37

14

82

7

38

9

83

5

39

20

84

8

40

16

85

9

41

10

86

5

42

14

87

3

43

14

88

5

44

25

89

4

45

10

90

7

46

12

91

7

47

13

92

7

48

9

93

4

49

16

94

9

29 April 2013

44

Paragliding Competitions over the Years â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Appendix B: Raw data

Edition 2013

number of pilots

number of comps

number of pilots

number of comps

95

7

125

2

96

6

126

3

97

2

127

2

98

4

128

2

99

5

129

7

100

10

130

5

101

4

131

2

102

7

132

1

103

6

133

7

104

5

134

1

105

7

135

4

106

8

136

4

107

3

137

2

108

5

138

5

109

9

139

3

110

6

140

3

111

2

141

2

112

7

143

2

113

3

144

4

114

7

145

2

115

3

146

3

116

7

147

2

117

2

148

3

118

4

149

4

119

5

150

3

120

2

121

6

122

6

123

9

124

8

29 April 2013

158 1 Table B-6: Number of competitions in 2001-2011 per number of participants

45

Paragliding Competitions over the Years â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Appendix B: Raw data

date

#comps

# participations

# competitors

date

Edition 2013

#comps

# participations

# competitors

Jan-01

3

119

Sep-04

8

534

2359

Feb-01

3

200

Oct-04

6

395

2442

Mar-01

1

77

Nov-04

4

208

2507

Apr-01

1

10

Dec-04

4

161

2529

May-01

6

334

Jan-05

4

318

2558

Jun-01

5

415

Feb-05

2

147

2574

Jul-01

5

487

Mar-05

0

0

2520

Aug-01

6

455

Apr-05

4

167

2579

Sep-01

4

301

May-05

12

1026

2780

Oct-01

1

53

Jun-05

13

1039

2802

Nov-01

2

50

Jul-05

12

897

2784

Dec-01

1

88

1526

Aug-05

8

671

2827

Jan-02

4

191

1559

Sep-05

6

300

2801

Feb-02

3

259

1662

Oct-05

4

235

2804

Mar-02

1

112

1681

Nov-05

1

79

2744

Apr-02

1

101

1728

Dec-05

4

163

2741

May-02

6

277

1612

Jan-06

5

291

2757

Jun-02

7

566

1752

Feb-06

5

335

2818

Jul-02

3

206

1650

Mar-06

6

514

2904

Aug-02

10

638

1810

Apr-06

5

397

2965

Sep-02

6

494

1886

May-06

18

859

2835

Oct-02

4

249

1965

Jun-06

30

1889

3174

Nov-02

1

13

1960

Jul-06

16

1009

3220

Dec-02

2

120

1981

Aug-06

15

606

3186

Jan-03

2

72

1970

Sep-06

16

949

3300

Feb-03

2

133

1819

Oct-06

8

375

3320

Mar-03

5

548

1980

Nov-06

5

261

3405

Apr-03

4

357

2031

Dec-06

4

258

3444

May-03

7

345

2092

Jan-07

6

237

3462

Jun-03

8

413

2013

Feb-07

5

493

3492

Jul-03

4

417

2043

Mar-07

5

136

3453

Aug-03

12

767

2233

Apr-07

9

580

3526

Sep-03

4

301

2129

May-07

30

1212

3750

Oct-03

2

109

2066

Jun-07

19

1310

3588

Nov-03

2

105

2092

Jul-07

21

1382

3672

Dec-03

1

88

2066

Aug-07

19

692

3714

Jan-04

4

224

2156

Sep-07

19

1096

3731

Feb-04

1

89

2152

Oct-07

8

513

3738

Mar-04

2

288

2073

Nov-07

6

203

3743

Apr-04

2

101

2067

Dec-07

5

225

3731

May-04

11

673

2169

Jan-08

4

302

3718

Jun-04

11

820

2281

Feb-08

7

393

3692

Jul-04

10

565

2365

Mar-08

9

468

3742

Aug-04

12

746

2311

Apr-08

9

340

3696

29 April 2013

46

Paragliding Competitions over the Years â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Appendix B: Raw data

date

#comps

# participations

# competitors

May-08

31

1476

3810

Jun-08

27

1604

Jul-08

13

Aug-08

26

Sep-08

date

Edition 2013

#comps

# participations

# competitors

Dec-10

6

278

4219

3916

Jan-11

5

396

4162

1090

3853

Feb-11

3

178

4134

1462

3927

Mar-11

5

177

4068

15

798

3873

Apr-11

13

437

4026

Oct-08

6

435

3850

May-11

26

957

4075

Nov-08

9

354

3909

Jun-11

39

1895

4098

Dec-08

6

304

3916

Jul-11

18

478

3844

Jan-09

5

302

3931

Aug-11

32

1713

3919

Feb-09

3

154

3890

Sep-11

14

662

3978

Mar-09

9

578

3851

Oct-11

11

438

3982

Apr-09

11

534

3869

Nov-11

6

306

3990

May-09

35

1720

3947

Dec-11

3

180

3947

Jun-09

26

1268

3918

Jan-12

3

191

3923

Jul-09

29

1784

4072

Feb-12

3

255

3933

Aug-09

30

1601

4128

Mar-12

8

342

3964

Sep-09

12

639

4069

Apr-12

14

428

3972

Oct-09

7

371

4081

May-12

18

935

4015

Nov-09

6

176

4034

Jun-12

26

1425

3826

Dec-09

6

346

4044

Jul-12

29

1357

4007

Jan-10

6

313

4088

Aug-12

25

1352

3900

Feb-10

3

158

4110

Sep-12

14

690

3864

Mar-10

10

482

4144

Oct-12

9

375

3846

Apr-10

15

777

4252

Nov-12

8

329

3899

May-10

27

798

4063

Dec-12

5

260

3906

Jun-10

29

1652

4296

Jan-13

7

564

3954

Jul-10

30

1739

4342

Feb-13

4

243

3944

Aug-10

30

1467

4275

Sep-10

12

646

4224

Mar-13 7 345 Table B-7: Raw monthly data paragliding

Oct-10

11

568

4212

Nov-10

7

237

4226

29 April 2013

3947

47

Paragliding Competitions over the Years â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Appendix B: Raw data

date

# comps

# participations

# competitors

date

Edition 2013

# comps

# participations

# competitors

Jan-01

4

227

Sep-04

1

8

813

Feb-01

1

20

Oct-04

2

85

770

Mar-01

0

0

Nov-04

1

13

775

Apr-01

4

168

Dec-04

0

0

775

May-01

3

44

Jan-05

2

137

736

Jun-01

1

46

Feb-05

1

19

746

Jul-01

6

331

Mar-05

0

0

746

Aug-01

4

270

Apr-05

3

119

780

Sep-01

1

15

May-05

7

307

793

Oct-01

2

69

Jun-05

3

57

758

Nov-01

0

0

Jul-05

6

217

795

Dec-01

2

42

759

Aug-05

5

223

798

Jan-02

3

230

752

Sep-05

0

0

796

Feb-02

0

0

743

Oct-05

1

61

787

Mar-02

1

54

772

Nov-05

1

54

800

Apr-02

4

181

787

Dec-05

0

0

800

May-02

6

213

929

Jan-06

3

127

803

Jun-02

3

119

981

Feb-06

2

62

812

Jul-02

5

210

1012

Mar-06

2

0

812

Aug-02

7

280

1004

Apr-06

6

235

851

Sep-02

1

79

1008

May-06

7

93

783

Oct-02

1

70

1019

Jun-06

6

109

804

Nov-02

0

0

1019

Jul-06

9

289

817

Dec-02

1

15

1005

Aug-06

5

225

807

Jan-03

3

221

995

Sep-06

2

57

833

Feb-03

0

0

995

Oct-06

1

73

842

Mar-03

2

67

1015

Nov-06

2

35

839

Apr-03

2

149

982

Dec-06

2

24

855

May-03

4

128

913

Jan-07

2

72

818

Jun-03

5

182

910

Feb-07

1

23

810

Jul-03

12

442

1014

Mar-07

3

56

838

Aug-03

4

115

929

Apr-07

6

270

845

Sep-03

1

28

921

May-07

4

117

854

Oct-03

3

167

994

Jun-07

9

266

898

Nov-03

0

0

994

Jul-07

14

380

934

Dec-03

0

0

980

Aug-07

1

43

872

Jan-04

4

218

985

Sep-07

3

76

883

Feb-04

0

0

985

Oct-07

1

61

876

Mar-04

0

0

950

Nov-07

1

27

874

Apr-04

2

98

946

Dec-07

1

30

879

May-04

6

204

971

Jan-08

2

112

884

Jun-04

2

103

969

Feb-08

1

22

885

Jul-04

2

75

731

Mar-08

6

73

875

Aug-04

5

267

816

Apr-08

3

94

838

29 April 2013

48

Paragliding Competitions over the Years â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Appendix B: Raw data

date

# comps

# participations

# competitors

May-08

10

330

914

Jun-08

5

83

856

date

Edition 2013

# comps

# participations

# competitors

Dec-10

1

37

1068

Jan-11

5

118

1012

Jul-08

8

276

780

Feb-11

1

0

1011

Aug-08

10

258

854

Mar-11

3

31

968

Sep-08

1

28

850

Apr-11

4

179

939

Oct-08

2

0

816

May-11

10

317

967

Nov-08

3

84

845

Jun-11

7

86

936

Dec-08

1

21

839

Jul-11

9

291

931

Jan-09

2

100

837

Aug-11

9

395

913

Feb-09

1

29

844

Sep-11

4

91

933

Mar-09

3

67

814

Oct-11

4

146

991

Apr-09

3

171

875

Nov-11

1

0

968

May-09

11

328

859

Dec-11

1

53

985

Jun-09

9

234

901

Jan-12

2

126

1001

Jul-09

8

272

869

Feb-12

2

64

1047

Aug-09

14

455

965

Mar-12

4

118

1063

Sep-09

4

86

992

Apr-12

7

309

1092

Oct-09

2

85

1014

May-12

11

331

1085

Nov-09

1

23

999

Jun-12

6

208

1113

Dec-09

1

36

1004

Jul-12

11

402

1108

Jan-10

5

200

1043

Aug-12

8

227

1088

Feb-10

1

37

1032

Sep-12

4

123

1097

Mar-10

2

54

1023

Oct-12

3

67

1074

Apr-10

6

301

1073

Nov-12

1

14

1085

May-10

10

242

1079

Dec-12

2

73

1078

Jun-10

10

218

1058

Jan-13

2

0

1055

Feb-13

4

91

1051

Jul-10

8

249

1094

Aug-10

8

512

1083

Sep-10

2

63

1052

Oct-10

2

55

1048

Nov-10

2

60

1070

29 April 2013

Mar-13 7 88 Table B-8: Raw monthly data hang gliding

1025

49

Paragliding Competitions over the Years â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Appendix C: Database queries

Edition 2013

Appendix C: Database queries For completeness sake, I list here the database queries I used to extract the data given in Appendix A. The RDBMS is Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2.

C.1 Participations view use [wprs] go create view ladder2.v_participations as select DATEPART(Year, e.date_from) as year, p.person_id, c.discipline_id, count(p.competition_id) as participations, c.civl_sanction_id from event.competition c, event.event e, event.competition_person p where c.event_id=e.id and p.competition_id=c.id group by p.person_id, DATEPART(Year, e.date_from), c.discipline_id, c.civl_sanction_id go

C.2 Competition years view use [wprs] go create view pilot.v_years as select p.person_id, count(distinct DATEPART(Year, e.date_from)) as years, c.discipline_id, c.civl_sanction_id from event.competition c, event.event e, event.competition_person p where c.event_id=e.id and p.competition_id=c.id and e.date_to <= '2013-01-01' group by p.person_id, c.discipline_id, c.civl_sanction_id go

C.3 Annual raw data use [wprs] declare @sanction INT=2, @discipline int=1, /*1=pg, 2=hg 1, 3=hg 5, 8=hg 2, 10=hg sports*/ @ladder int=1, /*1=hg 1, 2=hg 2, 3=pg, 4=pg accy, 5=hg 5, 6=pg acro, 7=hg acro, 8=pg nor, 9=hg sports*/ @year varchar(100)='2003' select name, @year as year from event.discipline where id=@discipline; select count(*) as 'number of comps' from event.competition c, event.event e where c.event_id=e.id and c.civl_sanction_id=@sanction and e.date_from>=@year+'-01-01' and date_from<=@year+'-12-31' and c.discipline_id=@discipline select count(*) as 'number of comps without tasks' from event.competition c, event.event e where c.event_id=e.id and c.civl_sanction_id=@sanction and e.date_from>=@year+'-01-01' and date_from<=@year+'-12-31' and c.discipline_id=@discipline and (c.tasks=0 or c.tasks is null) select SUM(tplan) as 'tasks planned' from ( select (select MAX(v) from (values (datediff(day, e.date_from, e.date_to)), (c.tasks)) as value(v)) as tplan from event.competition c, event.event e where c.event_id=e.id and c.civl_sanction_id=@sanction and e.date_from>=@year+'-01-01' and date_from<=@year+'-12-31' and c.discipline_id=@discipline ) as t1 select SUM(tplan) as 'tasks planned when flown' from ( select (select MAX(v) from (values (datediff(day, e.date_from, e.date_to)), (c.tasks)) as value(v)) as tplan from event.competition c, event.event e where c.event_id=e.id and c.civl_sanction_id=@sanction and e.date_from>=@year+'-01-01' and date_from<=@year+'-12-31' and c.discipline_id=@discipline and c.tasks>0 ) as t1 select sum(c.tasks) as 'tasks flown' from event.competition c, event.event e where c.event_id=e.id and c.civl_sanction_id=@sanction and e.date_from>=@year+'-01-01' and date_from<=@year+'-12-31' and c.discipline_id=@discipline select count(distinct p.person_id) as 'number of pilots' from event.competition c, event.event e, event.competition_person p where c.event_id=e.id and c.civl_sanction_id=@sanction and e.date_from>=@year+'-01-01' and date_from<=@year+'-12-31' and c.discipline_id=@discipline and p.competition_id=c.id

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Paragliding Competitions over the Years â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Appendix C: Database queries

Edition 2013

select count(distinct p.person_id) as 'number of female pilots' from event.competition c, event.event e, event.competition_person p, pilot.person pil where c.event_id=e.id and c.civl_sanction_id=@sanction and e.date_from>=@year+'-01-01' and date_from<=@year+'-12-31' and c.discipline_id=@discipline and p.competition_id=c.id and p.person_id=pil.id and pil.female='TRUE' select count(p.person_id) as 'number of participations' from event.competition c, event.event e, event.competition_person p where c.event_id=e.id and c.civl_sanction_id=@sanction and e.date_from>=@year+'-01-01' and date_from<=@year+'-12-31' and c.discipline_id=@discipline and p.competition_id=c.id select count(p.person_id) as 'number of female participations' from event.competition c, event.event e, event.competition_person p, pilot.person pil where c.event_id=e.id and c.civl_sanction_id=@sanction and e.date_from>=@year+'-01-01' and date_from<=@year+'-12-31' and c.discipline_id=@discipline and p.competition_id=c.id and p.person_id=pil.id and pil.female='TRUE' declare @ranking_date date=dateadd(year, 1, @year+'-01-01'), @ranking_date_2 date=@year+'-12-01' if @year>2006 begin select count(*) as 'ranked pilots 2007+' from ladder2.person where ladder_id=@ladder and ranking_no=(select no from ladder2.ranking where ladder_id=@ladder and ranking_date=@ranking_date) select count(*) as 'ranked female pilots 2007+' from ladder2.person l, pilot.person p where ladder_id=@ladder and ranking_no=(select no from ladder2.ranking where ladder_id=@ladder and ranking_date=@ranking_date) and l.person_id=p.id and p.female='TRUE' end else if @year=2006 begin select count(*) as 'ranked pilots 2006' from ladder.ranking_person where ranking_id=(select id from ladder.ranking where ladder_id=@ladder and ranking_date=@ranking_date) select count(*) as 'ranked female pilots 2006' from ladder.ranking_person l, pilot.person p where ranking_id=(select id from ladder.ranking where ladder_id=@ladder and ranking_date=@ranking_date) and l.person_id=p.id and p.female='TRUE' end else if @year<2006 and @year>2001 begin select count(*) as 'ranked pilots 2002-2005' from ladder.ranking_person where ranking_id=(select id from ladder.ranking where ladder_id=@ladder and ranking_date=@ranking_date_2) select count(*) as 'ranked female pilots 2002-2005' from ladder.ranking_person l, pilot.person p where ranking_id=(select id from ladder.ranking where ladder_id=@ladder and ranking_date=@ranking_date_2) and l.person_id=p.id and p.female='TRUE' end select COUNT(*) as 'number of newcomers' from ladder2.v_participations p1 where p1.discipline_id=@discipline and p1.YEAR=@year and not exists (select * from ladder2.v_participations p2 where p2.discipline_id=@discipline and p1.person_id=p2.person_id and p2.YEAR<@year) select COUNT(*) as 'number of female newcomers' from ladder2.v_participations p1, pilot.person pil where p1.discipline_id=@discipline and p1.YEAR=@year and not exists (select * from ladder2.v_participations p2 where p2.discipline_id=@discipline and p1.person_id=p2.person_id and p2.YEAR<@year) and p1.person_id=pil.id and pil.female='TRUE'

C.4 Participations per year use [wprs] declare @sanction INT=2, @discipline int=1, /*1=pg, 2=hg 1, 3=hg 5, 8=hg 2, 10=hg sports*/ @year varchar(100)='2012' select parts, COUNT(distinct person_id) as 'FAI 2 participations' from ( select person_id, SUM(participations) as parts from ladder2.v_participations p1 where p1.discipline_id=@discipline and p1.YEAR=@year and civl_sanction_id=@sanction group by person_id ) as p1 group by parts order by parts

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Paragliding Competitions over the Years â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Appendix C: Database queries

Edition 2013

select parts, COUNT(distinct person_id) as 'FAI 1+2 participations' from ( select person_id, SUM(participations) as parts from ladder2.v_participations p1 where p1.discipline_id=@discipline and p1.YEAR=@year group by person_id ) as p1 group by parts order by parts

C.5 Total participations use [wprs] declare @sanction INT=2, @discipline int=1, /*1=pg, 2=hg 1, 3=hg 5, 8=hg 2, 10=hg sports*/ @year varchar(100)='2012' select parts, COUNT(distinct person_id) as 'FAI 2 participations' from ( select person_id, SUM(participations) as parts from ladder2.v_participations p1 where p1.discipline_id=@discipline and civl_sanction_id=@sanction and YEAR<=@year group by person_id ) as p1 group by parts order by parts select avg(cast(parts as float)) as average from ( select person_id, SUM(participations) as parts from ladder2.v_participations p1 where p1.discipline_id=@discipline and civl_sanction_id=@sanction and YEAR<=@year group by person_id ) as p2 SELECT ( (SELECT MAX(cast(parts as float)) FROM (SELECT TOP 50 PERCENT parts FROM ( select person_id, SUM(participations) as parts from ladder2.v_participations p1 where p1.discipline_id=@discipline and civl_sanction_id=@sanction and YEAR<=@year group by person_id ) as p2 ORDER BY parts) AS BottomHalf) + (SELECT MIN(cast(parts as float)) FROM (SELECT TOP 50 PERCENT parts FROM ( select person_id, SUM(participations) as parts from ladder2.v_participations p1 where p1.discipline_id=@discipline and civl_sanction_id=@sanction and YEAR<=@year group by person_id ) as p3 ORDER BY parts DESC) AS TopHalf) ) / 2.0 AS Median select parts, COUNT(distinct person_id) as 'FAI 1+2 participations' from ( select person_id, SUM(participations) as parts from ladder2.v_participations p1 where p1.discipline_id=@discipline and YEAR<=@year group by person_id ) as p1 group by parts order by parts

C.6 Active competitors use [wprs] declare @sanction INT=2, @discipline int=1 /*1=pg, 2=hg 1, 3=hg 5, 8=hg 2, 10=hg sports*/ select years, COUNT(distinct person_id) as 'number of pilots' from pilot.v_years y where y.discipline_id=@discipline and y.civl_sanction_id=@sanction group by years order by years; select AVG(cast(years as float)) as average from pilot.v_years y where y.discipline_id=@discipline and y.civl_sanction_id=@sanction

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Paragliding Competitions over the Years â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Appendix C: Database queries

Edition 2013

SELECT ( (SELECT MAX(cast(years as float)) FROM (SELECT TOP 50 PERCENT years FROM pilot.v_years y where y.discipline_id=@discipline and y.civl_sanction_id=@sanction ORDER BY years) AS BottomHalf) + (SELECT MIN(cast(years as float)) FROM (SELECT TOP 50 PERCENT years FROM pilot.v_years y where y.discipline_id=@discipline and y.civl_sanction_id=@sanction ORDER BY years DESC) AS TopHalf) ) / 2.0 AS Median

C.7 Monthly raw data competitions and participations use [wprs] declare @sanction INT=2, @discipline int=2 /*1=pg, 2=hg 1, 3=hg 5, 8=hg 2, 10=hg sports*/

select name from event.discipline where id=@discipline; select DATEPART(Year, e.date_to) as year, DATEPART(Month, e.date_to) as month, count(*) as 'number of comps' from event.competition c, event.event e where c.event_id=e.id and c.civl_sanction_id=@sanction and c.discipline_id=@discipline group by DATEPART(Year, e.date_to), DATEPART(Month, e.date_to) order by DATEPART(Year, e.date_to), DATEPART(Month, e.date_to) select DATEPART(Year, e.date_to) as year, DATEPART(Month, e.date_to) as month, count(p.person_id) as 'number of participations' from event.competition c, event.event e, event.competition_person p where c.event_id=e.id and c.civl_sanction_id=@sanction and c.discipline_id=@discipline and p.competition_id=c.id group by DATEPART(Year, e.date_to), DATEPART(Month, e.date_to) order by DATEPART(Year, e.date_to), DATEPART(Month, e.date_to)

C.8 Monthly raw data competitors use [wprs] declare @sanction INT=2, @discipline int=2 /*1=pg, 2=hg 1, 3=hg 5, 8=hg 2, 10=hg sports*/ DECLARE @Y int DECLARE Ys CURSOR LOCAL FOR select distinct DATEPART(Year, e.date_from) as year from event.event e order by year; OPEN Ys FETCH NEXT FROM Ys into @Y WHILE @@FETCH_STATUS = 0 BEGIN DECLARE @M int DECLARE Ms CURSOR LOCAL FOR select distinct DATEPART(Month, e.date_from) as month from event.event e order by month; OPEN Ms FETCH NEXT FROM Ms into @M WHILE @@FETCH_STATUS = 0 BEGIN declare @date1 date=dateadd(year,@Y-1900, dateadd(month, @M-1, dateadd(day,0,0))), @date2 date=dateadd(year,@Y-1900+1, dateadd(month, @M-1, dateadd(day,0,0)))

select @date2 as date, count(distinct p.person_id) as 'number of pilots' from event.competition c, event.event e, event.competition_person p where c.event_id=e.id and c.civl_sanction_id=@sanction and e.date_to>=@date1 and date_to<@date2 and c.discipline_id=@discipline and p.competition_id=c.id FETCH NEXT FROM Ms into @M END CLOSE Ms DEALLOCATE Ms FETCH NEXT FROM Ys into @Y

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Paragliding Competitions over the Years â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Appendix C: Database queries

Edition 2013

END CLOSE Ys DEALLOCATE Ys

C.9 Competition sizes use [wprs] declare @sanction INT=2, @discipline int=1, /*1=pg, 2=hg 1, 3=hg 5, 8=hg 2, 10=hg sports*/ @year varchar(100)='2012' select pilots as 'number of pilots', COUNT(pilots) as 'number of comps' from (select e.name, count(p.person_id) as pilots from event.competition c, event.event e, event.competition_person p where c.event_id=e.id and c.civl_sanction_id=@sanction and e.date_to>=@year+'-01-01' and date_to<=@year+'-12-31' and c.discipline_id=@discipline and p.competition_id=c.id group by e.name) as p1 group by pilots select pilots as 'number of pilots', COUNT(pilots) as 'number of comps' from (select e.name, count(p.person_id) as pilots from event.competition c, event.event e, event.competition_person p where c.event_id=e.id and c.civl_sanction_id=@sanction and date_to<@year+'-01-01' and c.discipline_id=@discipline and p.competition_id=c.id group by e.name) as p1 group by pilots

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54