Soft day makes for less than plane sailing

The air race world series is sponsored by a well-known caffeinated soft drink that purports to "give you wings".

The air race world series is sponsored by a well-known caffeinated soft drink that purports to "give you wings".

Wings would certainly have come in handy for the thousands of people stuck in tailbacks on either side of Cashel yesterday, when the series came to Ireland.

As it was, we were confined to the ground where - caffeine or no caffeine - we covered the last 12 miles in a gut-wrenching two hours. By a lucky break, the weather was just as bad as the traffic.

Never mind the chances of the drink's consumers, the air race itself was having trouble getting off the ground.

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The 2005 world series began in Abu Dhabi and will end in San Francisco. But those incredible men in their flying machines were no match for summer Irish-style, as a waterlogged landing strip forced organisers to postpone the start and then telescope the two scheduled rounds into one.

The series involves competitors negotiating mid-air obstacle courses against the clock, while doing prescribed routines including the loop-the-loop.

The obstacles yesterday did not include the Rock of Cashel - not officially anyway. But the ancient monument was chosen to provide a dramatic backdrop for overseas TV crews, and it was so close to the course that you feared for it.

A foreigner arriving late might well have thought the truncated high cross on the north of the rock had been decapitated by a competitor who missed the last "gate" (thereby incurring time penalties).

In the event, none of the participants collided with anything harder than the sailcloth gate-markers. And seasoned race watchers insisted the rock had been exposed to no greater risk than the likelihood of increased tourism.

Speaking on the winners' podium, the mayor of Cashel, Dan Dillon, apologised for the weather, protesting that his wife had "put the Child of Prague out last night". What the international media circus made of this is anyone's guess.

But it was undoubtedly a bad result for the Child of Prague, who will be hoping to make amends should the series ever return here.

It was a better result for a child of Budapest, Hungary's Peter Besenyei, who justified his billing as "the most famous acrobatic pilot of his generation" to win the race, averaging 342kph in his Extra 300S plane.

Having flown the craft upside-down under Budapest's Chain Bridge, among other things, Besenyei was not too worried about the Rock of Cashel.

On the other hand, the "rain and wind and bumpy air" of Ireland in July was a big challenge, he admitted.

Nicolas Ivanoff of France and Britain's Paul Bonhomme finished second and third respectively.

By the time they fetched the pilots back for the - they had to land at an airstrip in Kilkenny and return by helicopter - most of the 40,000 attendance were already in traffic jams on the way home.

A few hundred sodden enthusiasts stayed to cheer and, like Formula-1 drivers, the winners sprayed champagne around - as if we weren't all wet enough already.