Uli Schwenk is currently 8th at the OLC ranking. So don’t get distracted by his legendary smile, he already finished on the podium at 2 SGP finals. He also won 2 silver medals in World championships and one gold medal at a European competition. 

Uli started by flying radio controlled models while he was focusing on horse riding competitions. But he switched: “Riding a horse is fantastic, you have to learn the characters of your horse, in gliding you have the great honour to learn the characters of the weather, where you have to be in the middle of. You have to learn to understand the 4 dimensions and that makes gliding much more interesting”. And the difference between different gliders, you can ask. Uli seems to be pretty immune to them, flying both his ETA and a miniLak 13,5 mèters… When ask what he likes about competition, he replied: “I love most flying competitions, because I feel like to be at university, to learn and to understand quickly in a short time whats going on in the atmosphere. The camaraderie , even in high level competitions each competitor knows that we have to respect each other, otherwise we can have accidents. Also on the airfield we go to eat and drink with the opponents and this high level of social behavior makes the scenery of the gliding competitions so great.”

We are looking forward to seeing him, and his smile, on the airfield. In addition, after his second place in the final in Sisteron, he will be one of the pilots who we will for sure follow closely.