During the competition, there will be sixty pilots from 18 countries to compete for both the individual and the team title in the World Aerobatic Championships 2009 (WAC 2009), and Team Mazda UK is one of the favourites for both honours.
The six British team members are leaded by current British Champion Tom Cassells and guided by team trainer and ex-World Champion Eric Vazeille. Eric will also compete in the four minute freestyle representing Britain despite being a French national.
Alan Cassidy, who is the Chairman of the British Aerobatic Association and Chairman of WAC 2009 described the sport of aerobatics as being both physically and mentally demanding, just like “being inside a tumble drier, fighting Mike Tyson and trying to understand which way up you are.”
As described by Mazda, aerobatics plays out in three dimensions at over 150mph, one minute diving at the ground, the next climbing to a momentary stop before falling back towards the earth accelerating hard.
Sequences consist of negative flick rolls, fractions of flick rolls on vertical lines, left flicks followed by right flicks, inverted spins, rolling circles, knife edge spins, hesitation loops, inverted recoveries and gyroscopic manoeuvres where the aircraft stops flying in the normal sense and rotates around the engine in a tumbling motion, either vertically up or down.
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