Winning strategies

Measured in percent · no expected direction

How much further the pilot flew on glide than the optimised course line needed. 0% is a flight exactly along the line, and 12% is a glide 12% further than necessary. On each completed speed-section leg, we compare the pilot's route with the optimised distance of the leg, weighted by that optimised distance. Only the glides are measured at their full path length. Circling and searching contribute their entry-to-exit displacement instead. A climb or a search for lift therefore never reads as a wide line, because a pilot chooses a line only on glide. 0% is a real value that a pilot can reach: a pilot who flies the line of the optimiser scores exactly zero. There is no expected direction, and this metric changes sides with the day: on a day when most of the field completes the course, flying wide costs you, but on a day when most of it lands out, the pilots who leave the line to hunt for lift are the ones still in the air. Read the sign of the correlation against how many pilots made goal.

Measured in kilometres · higher is better

How far the pilot gets down the course before they must stop and circle again. This is the direct reading of how often they stop. The value is the scored flown distance divided by the number of thermals taken after the start, so 3 km means three kilometres of course for each climb. The pilot must fly 20 km or more. The note of each pilot adds their mean climb percentile inside shared thermals, so you can read the number of stops together with the climb strength. Long legs between weak climbs is a different day from long legs between strong ones.

Measured in percent · no expected direction

Whether the pilot raced with other pilots or alone. The value is the share of their flying time after the start inside a detected gaggle, that is, clustered with one other racing pilot or more on the shared time grid. There is no expected direction. A gaggle increases the power to search for lift, but it also holds a pilot to its own speed. The sign of the correlation says which of the two occurred here.

Measured in percent · no expected direction

Dolphin flying: how much of the height that the pilot gained came outside of circling. The value is the share of the altitude gain after the start, smoothed over 10 s, that the pilot made outside a detected thermal. There is no expected direction. The sign of the correlation shows whether dolphin flying paid on this day.