David Bareford Wins His 9th British National Championship

David Bareford has won the 2011 British hot air ballooning championships taking the title for a record ninth time.

David is already a twice world champion and three times European champion but dominated from early on but was chased all the way to the line by relative newcomer Rupert Stanley.

The event was organised by Exclusive Ballooning using the infrastructure used for the Exclusive Cup. BBC Radio Gloucestershire followed the event with wind readings being passed to pilots from the targets via the radio and there were constant live updates throughout each day giving results and also an update of the tasks flown and spectator information.

The event was the first ever to feature an online official notice board which became so popular that Lindstrand Balloons kindly sponsored it with the revenue finding its way to competitors as prize money.

BBC TV were also there to cover the event as were CNBC who were making a global sports program about the event which will be aired around the world including on major airlines.

The Berkeley based event ran for a week with seven flights giving 29 tasks including some new creative task setting from event director Andrew Holly. In fact, the task creativity has drawn praise from established directors Mathijs de Bruijn, Claude Weber and David Levin as well as one of the most highly regarded pilots in the world Uwe Schneider. In fact, some of the new tasks may now even find their way into the European championships held next month in Spain.

David won with a modest margin to Rupert in second, Richard Parry was third with Marcus Green fourth, Mike Howard fifth and Mathew Scaife in sixth.

Pictures: Exclusive Ballooning