13th at the women’s world championships 2004
Your best flying experience?
My personal best is a 160km triangle in Austria. But one of my most memorable flights was my third cross country. I had never managed before to thermal well enough to fly away from the launch field. In Forbes, Australia, after a couple of days aerotowing practice, I finally got the idea. Together with my partner, who was more talented than me, I flew a triangle of 115km (didn’t quite make goal though) in six hours, on an Avian Amour. It was a long battle and we bickered over the radio because he got cold up at cloudbase while I was sweating a few hundred meters over the ground, working hard to get up. I was dead tired but since I hadn’t any cross-country experience before, I had no idea what was supposed to be normal. I just flew on as long as I could. For years I didn’t improve on that distance, and I have never flown longer than that time.
What’s your best team result?
Third at the women’s world championships in 2004.
Have you flown Laragne before?
It’s one of my favourite sites, beautiful and very, very nice flying.
Your expectations for the pre-worlds 2008?
I hope to have nice flights, make goal at least once and have a fun time with toppilots.
Your life in brief?
I am a civil servant, a political scientist, working as a strategic advisor to the aviation supervisory authority. As a civil servant I can save overtime hours so I have enough vacation days to fly comps. In the evenings I swim or weightlift in order to be fit for flying. That is, if I’m not doing work for the board of the Dutch hanggliding union, of which I’m the secretary. Part of that work used to be writing press releases so I could promote our sport.
I’m totally addicted to hanggliding, to all of it: the joy of flight and the immense beauty of the world from up high, the emotional and mental learning processes, the physical feeling of achievement when I get to a goal, the social aspect of sharing a passion with a wide variety of people all around the world, and the competition where I always try to perform better than last time (and have to deal with disappointment and losing).
My favourite competitions are the Dutch Open because it has the best atmosphere, and the womens worlds where I have discovered that women do fly slightly different from men, and some of my ways are not as weird as I previously thought.