CELEBRATING 50 YEARS Balloon Fiesta® Competition History: Games Balloonists Play he story goes that when Sid Cutter was asked about bringing his balloon to KOB’s 50th anniversary celebration, he replied, “Sure. Maybe we could even have a balloon race.” And then it dawned on him: The had no idea how balloons “race.” But just ten days later, Sid and Don Draper were aloft as the target balloon in their very first competition. Since that day – April 8, 1972 – competition has been an integral part of what soon became the Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta. These contests – in the ballooning world, called “tasks” – have varied over the years from serious world-class challenges, to whimsical, fun tests, and most recently spectator-friendly versions of the kind of tasks used in regional and national Above: First Hot Air Balloon World Championships - 1973 competition. However, all the tasks, whether fun or serious, have the same principle: maneuver the balloon World Championship Competitions to a target and drop a marker as close to the center of the target as possible -- tasks that test pilots on the When Albuquerque was chosen to host the World Hot same skills they use on every flight. Air Balloon Championships, Balloonmeister Ed Yost and Sid Cutter – the guy who’d almost never seen a balloon Fiesta’s First Task: Hare and Hound/ race – had to come up with world-class challenges to Roadrunner and Coyote test the best pilots on the planet. Many of their early ideas were immediately shot down by the international The first Balloon Fiesta task – that race Sid Cutter ballooning federation because they involved maneuvers and Don Draper found themselves flying in 1972 – considered to be overly dangerous. (“And they were,” Sid was a standard ballooning competitive task of that admitted.) Once the bad ideas were weeded out, most of period called a “hare and hound,” or in Albuquerque, the tasks in the First Worlds involved flying specific flight “Roadrunner and Coyote.” A target balloon, the “hare” profiles traced on a barograph, an analog barometer- or “roadrunner,” takes off and flies for about a half hour based instrument which traces a balloon’s altitude over before landing and laying out an X-shaped target. The time (today, for similar tasks, balloon races use satellite- rest of the balloons, called “hounds” or “coyotes,” launch based GPS trackers). In addition to hare and hound and from the same location about 10 minutes after the hare barograph-type tasks, the Second Worlds included a “Le and follow along, trying to get as close to the target as Mans” race where teams had to inflate their balloons and possible. Nowadays, many events feature a similar task fly first across a finish line, and an “Elbow” task where called a “judge-declared goal,” where instead of following pilots had to fly a set distance in one direction and then a “hare” balloon, pilots fly to preset goals or targets. achieve the greatest change in direction. ® 224 Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta