L-R: Tomy Hofbauer, Luca Bayer, Vera Polaschegg, Timon Weber and Berni Pessl
Every year at their annual team meeting, Nova announce the winners of their Pilots of the Year awards. This year’s coveted titles went to Austrians Berni Pessl, Tomy Hofbauer and Vera Polaschegg; Young German pilots Luca Bayer and Timon Weber were named Nova’s Newcomers of the Year. Nova say the awards are made not only for performance in cross-country contests, but also for positive behaviour, engagement for the team and good communication in the form of blogs, videos, articles etc.
2014 was one of the most successful years in Nova’s history and various pilots would have deserved to become ‘Pilot of the Year 2014’. We were discussing about it a lot. We also decided not to reward pilots who have been very successful again and again over the past few years.
Berni Pessl was the most obvious winner. The 26-year old from Styria completed the first 300 km FAI triangle with a Mentor 3 and won the worldwide ranking of XContest.org in the standard class and sports class, too. He collected enough points to even come in second in open class! When Nova awarded his 300km flight with 3000 euros, he donated the amount to “Christina lebt”, an Austrian charity.
Like Pessl, Tomy Hofbauer and Very Polaschegg are very actively contributing to the Nova team blog, and they are both excellent competitors in hike & fly contests. In addition they show a strong engagement in organising hike & fly events for Nova. German junior pilots Timon Weber (22) and Luca Bayer (20) could establish themselves among accomplished XC veterans. Timon came in 5th, Luca 7th in German xc.dhv.de – while still being so young!
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