Fossett breaks World Sailplane speed record

by AAP NZ & Editor on 15 Nov 2002 American adventurer Steve Fossett and his New Zealand co-pilot has smashed a 12-year-old sail-plane speed world record.

Fossett and New Zealand sail-plane champion Terry Delore flew round a 500-kilometre triangular course in 2 hours 42 minutes to break the record by 12 minutes.

'We have broken the record by over 16 kilometres an hour, with an average speed of 187 kilometres,' an excited Fossett told The Associated Press by telephone from the southern New Zealand village of Omarama.

'This is my first gliding record,' he said, adding that Delore has broken at least 14 world records during his career.

Chicago investment millionaire Fossett, 58, became the first person to fly a balloon solo around the globe when he landed on a remote plain in eastern Australia on July 4.

German pilot Hans Werner Grosse set the record over Alice Springs, in central Australia, in 1990 at an average speed of 171 kilometres per hour.

'There aren't very many open gliding records ... so this is very important to me to get one of them,' Fossett said.

Gliding officials at the Omarama airfield, 670 kilometres southwest of the capital, Wellington, validated the time and confirmed from Global Positioning System monitors carried in the glider that the pair had flown the full course.

Fossett will fly home to the United States, but will return to New Zealand Dec 1 for an attempt on the world nonstop gliding distance record of 2,473 kilometres, set by German Klaus Ohlmann in Argentina in 2001.