Skydive Dubai grab pole

dubai — Jay Price and Sultan Al Dhaheri steered Skydive Dubai to the Emaar sponsored pole position in the UIM Skydive Dubai XCAT World Series trials at Meishan Bay in Ninbo, China on Saturday.

They competed the 3.8 nautical mile course in two minutes 22.03 seconds to book their top spot at the sixth round of the series.

Fazza (Arif Al Zaffein and Mohammed Al Marri), the series leaders, will start the race in second place after recording a lap of 2:25.60 while European Grand Prix winners Six (Tomaso Polli and Luca Nicolini) will start in third.

Claiming the all-important fourth spot for the first gate was the Victory Team boat, with a lap of 2:26.46. But, in a moment reminiscent of that last race in Arona, Italy, the duo of Talib Al Sayed and Salem Al Adidi flipped their boat on their seventh lap, meaning the Victory Team will be in a race against time to get the boat in shape to race on Sunday.

“The conditions were not good — very rough and windy which caused problems so we are happy to have finished top” said Al Daheri of Skydive Dubai — the boat sponsored by Baia Blu D’Oriente.

“In the early mornings you can get good speed here but then later on it gets too rough. We’ve had the same conditions for three days now so we’ll see what happens tomorrow.”

Manager for the Victory Team, Ragesh Elayadeth confirmed that the pilots of the flipped boat were unharmed, and also pointed out that his team have been in similar situations before, where they have worked through the night to repair a boat, which has then gone on to win the race the next day.

“The pilots are fine but we just have to see about the boat still. It’s a submerged boat so we’ll try to do our best to get on the water tomorrow,” he said.