Team USA is Hungary
Al Nels doing his team manager thing in Japan 2006
Every two years countries from around the world send their best pilots to compete for ballooning's gold medal, the world championship. Many of you who follow competitive ballooning in the U.S. may not know that this year's World Championship will be held this fall in Debrecan, Hungary.
Preparations are well under way for Team USA, which will send six pilots to carry our flag this coming October. America's team features two past World Champions, Joe Heartsill and John Petrehn, and four past National Champions Nick Donner, Paul Petrehn, Steve Jones, and Owen Keown. The six pilots will have crews of around five people, making the total American Team presence on Hungarian soil around 30 people. The incredible financial undertaking of transportation, lodging, and shipping is placed entirely on the competitors who have earned the right to represent our country.
Curves and the BFA help support Team USA by regularly contributing to a World Team Fund. This fund is distributed evenly between the team members to help offset some of the costs of going overseas. A single pilot can easily spend $10,000 on airline tickets, car rentals, food, balloon shipping, etc.
In addition to the six competitors this year, Team USA will have two team managers who will be on the ground feeding wind and task information to our pilots. The team managers will have accurate wind info from before takeoff until the final task allowing the pilot's ground crew to focus on driving and feeding target info to the pilot.
Pilot Nick Donner knows importance of the team managers, "Team Managers are the backbone of the team. They give us wind data and help with task/rule explanation during the flight."
This year Team USA is taking two time World Champion Al Nels and U.S. Nationals Weather Officer Brad Temeyer to Hungary as team managers. Nels was team manager in Japan 2006 where Team USA placed three pilots in the top four.
"In 2006, Al and his team always seemed to be in the right place at the right time." Donner said. "Giving us the vital information we needed in the air"
A country's number of invitations to the World Championships are directly related to how that country finishes in the previous championship. The better the country does as a whole, the more invites they get for the next one.
"The better quality help we have," 2006 World Champion John Petrehn explains, "the better we should do and the better we do, the more US pilots will get to fly in Battle Creek in 2012.".
While the pilots get a stipend from the Curves/BFA Worlds Fund, the team managers are completely on their own. So to help them out this year, members of Team USA are selling shirts all summer to raise money for the manager's expenses. The shirts are red in color and feature a logo on the front designed by Joe Heartsill's crew Cody Sherrod, and a logo on the back designed by Cameron's Andy Gross. Curves is featured on the shirt to show thanks for their years of support with the World Team Fund. Cameron and Lindstrand also get a shout out on the shirt as they both helped subsidize the cost of production.
They will be available this weekend in Canton, OH from Paul Petrehn and in Longview, TX from Nick Donner, Joe Heartsill, and John Petrehn. Joe Heartsill will take whatever stock is left to Indianola for the Classic the following week. Once the stock has run out, a one time order will be placed to for special sizes and pre-paid orders.
Stay tuned to BalloonPong for updates on Team USA throughout the summer and for live coverage during the worlds this October.
GO TEAM USA!
Preparations are well under way for Team USA, which will send six pilots to carry our flag this coming October. America's team features two past World Champions, Joe Heartsill and John Petrehn, and four past National Champions Nick Donner, Paul Petrehn, Steve Jones, and Owen Keown. The six pilots will have crews of around five people, making the total American Team presence on Hungarian soil around 30 people. The incredible financial undertaking of transportation, lodging, and shipping is placed entirely on the competitors who have earned the right to represent our country.
Curves and the BFA help support Team USA by regularly contributing to a World Team Fund. This fund is distributed evenly between the team members to help offset some of the costs of going overseas. A single pilot can easily spend $10,000 on airline tickets, car rentals, food, balloon shipping, etc.
In addition to the six competitors this year, Team USA will have two team managers who will be on the ground feeding wind and task information to our pilots. The team managers will have accurate wind info from before takeoff until the final task allowing the pilot's ground crew to focus on driving and feeding target info to the pilot.
Pilot Nick Donner knows importance of the team managers, "Team Managers are the backbone of the team. They give us wind data and help with task/rule explanation during the flight."
This year Team USA is taking two time World Champion Al Nels and U.S. Nationals Weather Officer Brad Temeyer to Hungary as team managers. Nels was team manager in Japan 2006 where Team USA placed three pilots in the top four.
"In 2006, Al and his team always seemed to be in the right place at the right time." Donner said. "Giving us the vital information we needed in the air"
A country's number of invitations to the World Championships are directly related to how that country finishes in the previous championship. The better the country does as a whole, the more invites they get for the next one.
"The better quality help we have," 2006 World Champion John Petrehn explains, "the better we should do and the better we do, the more US pilots will get to fly in Battle Creek in 2012.".
While the pilots get a stipend from the Curves/BFA Worlds Fund, the team managers are completely on their own. So to help them out this year, members of Team USA are selling shirts all summer to raise money for the manager's expenses. The shirts are red in color and feature a logo on the front designed by Joe Heartsill's crew Cody Sherrod, and a logo on the back designed by Cameron's Andy Gross. Curves is featured on the shirt to show thanks for their years of support with the World Team Fund. Cameron and Lindstrand also get a shout out on the shirt as they both helped subsidize the cost of production.
They will be available this weekend in Canton, OH from Paul Petrehn and in Longview, TX from Nick Donner, Joe Heartsill, and John Petrehn. Joe Heartsill will take whatever stock is left to Indianola for the Classic the following week. Once the stock has run out, a one time order will be placed to for special sizes and pre-paid orders.
Stay tuned to BalloonPong for updates on Team USA throughout the summer and for live coverage during the worlds this October.
GO TEAM USA!