1st task: 87km around 4tp, Primoz 1st

I was honoured to be the first pilot off the Alidag mountain today, I started the European Championships in hang gliding! This also meant that I had to fly 1,5 hrs until the start window finally opened... luckily there were clouds, but it was not that easy to get high and stay there. In the end, I had a good start into the task and flew with the top 12 for quite a while. Quite often I saw Matjaz (SLO) and Antoine Boisselier (FRA), but also Christian, Gerd, Andre and Roland were always in the front pack.
Until the 3rd turnpoint where we had to go directly against an unforgiving, direct headwind of up to 40km/h... not my favourite situation. I had to land about 6km short of the last turnpoint, but it seems like only 4 guys made it around and got to goal: 1st Primoz (SLO), 2nd Alex(ITA), 3rd Christian Zehetmaier (GER) and 4th Walter Mayer (AUT). With Gerd just short of the turnpoint and Roland 3km short of it, I think the team score will look quite good for the first day.
It was fun to go cross/tailwind with the clouds, I wish we would have continued just that way. Most of this country seems to be hills and canyons, and with this wind strength, they can develop quite a lot of turbulence in lower levels and direction changes of 90 degrees are normal. So I was very happy when Suan Selenati (ITA) held up a wind flag for me when I landed in his field. About a minute after my touch down next to a main road, our team car pulled up, Tobi stayed with me and helped me to pack my glider in the strong wind, while Uli went to pick up Andre and returned to get us afterwards. We also stopped to take Roland and Balasz (HUN) with us. Great - my chance to complain to Balasz about his push on launch - he made us go right after the window opened into not exactly the best air yet... I guess I was not the only one who was not so happy about it, just the first one ;)
Cloud base was at 2600m first, rising to 3000m at the ridge between 2nd and 3rd turnpoint. The forecast had been for 3600m. The wind went up from 20km/h to up to 40km/h in the late afternoon, thermals seemed more horizontal than vertical. Results will be here hopefully soon!