British Winter Open Task 3

Richard Meek reports

The weather gods shone on a Roldanillo, providing a fantastic sky for the 3rd task of the British Winter Open 2026. The committee set a 97km task over seven legs with a start cylinder centred on La Victoria, giving options to position on the edge of the mountains to the west, the terrain to the east or the middle of the valley.

340m AGL after 10 mins

The majority chose the mountains southwest of La Union, but Seb Ospina and a couple of others tried their luck starting from Obando. There wasn’t much in it as the groups converged at the first turn point.

The race saw a mixture of conditions: strong sun and thermals at some points and some high cloud at others, taking the heat out of the day. Gaggle split and reformed multiple times with many changes in the lead of the race. Unusually, multiple gaggles converged in the climb before final glide with 38 pilots crossing end of speed within 2 minutes if the fastest.

1500m AGL 10 mins before the end

First across the line was Vidar Ulvedal (Norway), Giuliano Minutella (Italy) was 17 seconds behind but took the task win, having led out the most. Amongst the British contingent, Richard Meek crossed the line first, having recovered from a poor start, but Dylan Mansley won the task.

Checkout the results at https://airtribune.com/bwo2026/results

Follow the racing at https://api.airtribune.com/

With thanks to British Competitions sponsors: FlySpain, Ozone, Flyeo, Aerofix, Cross Country Magazine

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