Opening ceremony
Opening ceremony
All the competitors were bussed into town and gathered on a small square in the very pretty and picturesque old town of Nördlingen. We were then led the short way to the square before church ‘Daniel’ (I don’t think it was named in honour of our team leader!) for the team presentations and speeches… and how the speeches went on! There were local dignitaries, then someone who must have been the tourist officer for Nördlingen, then a very rousing speech from the President of the German Aero Club (”We need our airspace! Comrades, gather together for the fight for our rights” or something like that), then a very short few words from Tomas Backman (Jury President). Wolfgang and I were stood on stage along with a bunch of blokes in suits, and while one of the longer speeches was dragging on, I clearly heard him utter a rather fluent chain of English swearwords. Maybe he should have set a ‘total speech time’ for that task! No more words, just a load of pictures of the team.
Anita Holmes, Brad Wagenhauser
Chris Saysell, Chris Wills
Claire Wills, David (Team Leader) Daniel
Jay Madhvani, Jeremy Bolten
James ‘Lipinskinator’ Lipinski, Matt Botten
Ollie Neece, Owain ‘You can’t print that’ Johns
Paul Dewhurst, Paul Welsh
Rob Grimwood, Rees Keene
Rob Keene, Simon Baker
Lastly, Richard ‘Sandalman’ Rawes