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Info:
After some serious issues with the original field at the EBC 2019 venue in St. Gallen, we scouted for alternatives in the area (big thanks to Roger Aepli). The field near Roggwil showed overall the best characteristics. It was not perfectly flat, but the grass was freshly cut. What was a bit worrying to me was the nearby road, ca. 250 m from the bullseye. Indeed, one boomerang landed on the road, but luckily the traffic was not very heavy.

Here is an impression of the field:



Here is a link to a tagged map: https://map.search.ch/d/2iwyzjizd.

In the morning of Aug 8, we left about 8:30 with a van to drive to the field, which is about 25 min away from Stadion Gründenmoos. Some contestants from Germany drove by themselves directly to the field. There were 17 participants, so we made 4 groups. The groupings were made by random. David Hirsch was very kind and brought his LD kit (ropes, poles, etc.) all the way across the Atlantic from the US, so I did not have to use my embarrassing collection of items.

We threw one round of 8 throws before lunch, and another 8 throws in the afternoon. The first group had very low wind, hence there were only few valid throws. The next group had somewhat more favourable conditions, but still the wind was not more than a very slight breeze, dropping again to calm every now and then. After the first round Alejo Palacio was leading with 136 m, the second farthest throw was Uwe Kitzberger’s 118 m.

After lunch, sandwiches brought to the field by Roger, many improved their score in the second round. Alejo improved to 139 m in his 4th trow. Manuel Schütz did not score until his 6th throw (109 m), but then in his very last throw managed to get a valid return from 169 m. There was confusion first among the spotters, because first we thought the throw as not valid. But then the judge at the line announced that it was valid, so the spotters had to estimate where the previously located distance was. Obviously, there is considerable error in the measured 169 m, which I estimate at around +/- 10-20m. In any case, the second farthest throw at 139 m is sufficiently far away to have a clear winner and new European Champion Manuel Schütz ! Manu therefore defended his title from Wales 2017 (152 m). Third came Thorsten Gaupp, holder of the German Record, with just 1 m behind Alejo with 138 m. Of course we know that the measuring precision is not better than 1 m, so essentially those two throws went equally far. Personal bests were scored by Matéo Guerréro (108 m), Keith Dyer (104 m on his first LD tournament !) and Anthony Gélin (102 m).

Here is a link to the scoresheet with all the results:
https://www.ebc2019.ch/content/ld_ebc19.pdf

Here is a photo of the first three:


Alejo Palacio (139 m), Manuel Schütz (169 m), Thorsten Gaupp (138 m).


Lorenz Gubler, 27-AUG-2019