17th FAI World Hot Air Balloon Championship, Tochigi, Japan 2006

We were all getting ready for a great championship in Motegi (just 100 km north of Tokyo) this year when we received the shocking mail that the championship director Masashi Kakuda passed away after a heart attack only 10 days before the event. Masashi was the heart and brain of so many balloon meetings in Japan that nobody could believe his sudden death. With all preparations nearly completed the organization team then continued their tasks and deputy director Les Purfield was named to run the competition as Jean-Claude Weber described it: "This will be Masashi's World Championship".

When the 63 teams from 38 countries arrived in Motegi the weather forecast looked very mixed, with quite a few bad weather patterns waiting to come into the area. In the end it turned out that only three flights were rained out and one afternoon flight was cancelled due to high winds. So we managed to have 10 flights with a total of 28 tasks, missing the 32 tasks from last year in Motegi only by a small number. The level of competition was very high and soon several good pilots had to find out that "only good" is not good enough for this competition. The USA team early showed its dominance and while it often looked like a race between Joe Heartsill and Nick Donner to be the new World Champion in the end John Petrehn was able to take the cup home to the US with Joe Heartsill on second. German pilot Uwe Schneider only managed on the last day to break into this crowd and take at least the third place to Europe.

It was a great experience to be part of this World Championship as an observer. To feel the serious competition while still showing respect to everybody else perfectly showed how everyone was trying to dedicate this championship to Masashi and it was a very hearty welcome when his family arrived in Motegi to watch the final flights and to celebrate the new champion. Japan was a great host country and I have never felt so welcome as for this championship. The three cities Motegi, Haga and Utsunomyia of the Tochigi prefecture that were the flying areas for this event competed for the balloonists appreciation by celebrating wonderful welcome parties. The organisation of the event was very smooth and everybody was sad that it will soon be over when they watched the great balloon glow with fire works and music at the Twin Ring race track on Saturday night.

Thanks to all the pilots I was assigned to observe, you did a great job in keeping my amount of work low :-), and a great thanks to Crispin, Sean and Rimas for wonderful flights including a faint view of Fuji-san! I will be coming back to Japan.

Christian Michel
クリスチィアン・ミヒェル