Balloon racing is a sport where pilots compete to complete tasks based on accuracy rather than speed. Festivals feature light-hearted tasks like the hare and hound, while serious competitions require tactical knowledge and strategy. Winning can qualify pilots for higher levels of competition.
Balloon racing is a competitive event that allows balloon pilots and their crews to improve their skill level and rankings in the sport. While these events might be called races for practical purposes, a balloon race is not a speed judging contest. These ballooning events range from casual festival encounters to serious competition events overseen by various sanctioning bodies.
A typical race pits competitors head-to-head to determine who is the fastest to get from the start line to the finish line. The same rules generally apply whether the racers are individuals, vehicles or horses. Balloon rides, however, aren’t about speed. This is because wind speed primarily determines the pace of a balloon aircraft and the direction in which it moves. Therefore, all competitors in the races are traveling at similar speeds.
Instead of being the focus of speed in balloon racing, pilots are judged by completing tasks based on accuracy. Points are awarded for each activity and the overall winner is the driver who accumulates the most points over the course of the competition. At festivals, the goal is usually to raise awareness of ballooning as a sport and recreation. As a result, the duties of these events are usually light-hearted in nature and designed to provide entertainment for spectators.
One of the most likely tasks to include in a festival is the classic hare and hound. In this task, the competing balloons, called the hounds, trail the lead balloon, known as the hare. The pilots then have to drop a weighted marker on a large target laid out on the ground by the hare. Usually this target is a cross-shaped piece of fabric. The closer a pilot gets to the center of the target with his marker, the greater the amount of points he receives.
Key-taking is another popular task included at festivals. Instead of using the cross as a target, key-grabbing uses a tall post with a ring, ribbon, or set of detachable keys attached. The first driver to remove the attachment wins the grand prize. In an alternate version of this task, the pilots may be given a hoop and asked to drop it over the pole.
Activities featured in serious balloon racing may include stated goals where the pilot or a judge will set a goal before the flight begins. The contestants will then try to drop the marker as close to the goal as possible. Several tasks focus on changing direction in flight. In the elbow task, pilots leave a marker after flying out a specified minimum distance. Pilots then deviate as much as possible from the original direction and drop the second marker at their final destination in an effort to achieve the maximum degree of change.
Compared to festivals, competition-level balloon racing is generally more complex and requires more tactical knowledge and strategy. Knowledge of local terrain, wind conditions and maps are all tools used by top pilots. These instruments, along with global positioning systems, help pilots make elevation changes to correspond to different airflows. In turn, this allows a pilot to change his speed and heading so that his aircraft passes closer to the target. Winning locally, state or regionally sanctioned balloon competitions can qualify balloonists for the next higher level of competition.
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