Dinant Riks Receives Awards for Outstanding Performance in Gliding

Dinant Riks (DPhil Clinical Neurosciences, 2015) recently won two club trophies from the Oxford University Gliding Club (OUGC), both of which were awarded during the Club’s 80th anniversary dinner on Saturday 29th April.

He received the Peter Pratelli Trophy for best flight in the preceding year. He explained ‘I was awarded this trophy for an outstanding cross-country flight during the 2016 Bicester Regionals competition.’ Dinant entered the Bicester Regionals with Chris Ballance (Junior Research Fellow at Magdalen College, Oxford); they finished in 11th place out of 25 competitors, many of whom were pilots with decades of experience.

Dinant also won the Cuppers League Trophy for Pembroke College as he achieved the highest score in the year-long Cuppers League. In this competition pilots strive for the best cumulative height gain during a 50-minute soaring flight.

Furthermore, Dinant was recently awarded a Half-Blue by the Men’s Blues Committee for participation in last year's annual Gliding Varsity Match between the gliding clubs of Oxford and Cambridge University.

Dinant is thrilled to have just taken up his role as President of the University’s Gliding Club. We caught up with him to find out a bit more about the year ahead. He explained:

‘While Oxford has come out on top five out of seven times since 2010, we lost last, due to an unusual set of circumstances, which led to the entire format of the Varsity Match changing from a soaring competition to a spot-landing competition.

As a result, the home club had a big home advantage which we did not anticipate, and we narrowly lost the match. However, this year we will be returning to our home airfield at Bicester, and to the normal soaring format, and we are confident we will bring the Varsity trophy back home to Oxford!’

Dinant started gliding in 2009 with the Zweefvliegclub Eindhovense Studenten (a gliding club for students in Eindhoven), in the Netherlands. He went solo after 3 months, and received his glider pilot license in 2011.

Dinant has an exciting year ahead of him; he has trained to be a gliding instructor and hopes to complete training this summer to become an ‘Assistant Category Instructor’. This will allow him to instruct members from OUGC and their host club, Windrushers, in all aspects of gliding, from their first flight until they get their own glider pilot license.

So, why does he love it so much? Dinant told us:

‘For me being up there between the clouds, soaring with the birds, is the best feeling in the world. No engine, no noise, just looking down at the landscape with the tiny sheep, tiny trees, tiny cars and tiny houses.

It is in these moments that I am completely free of worries about work, papers and exams, and can just completely relax. I recommend everyone to try it as least once, as long as you’re not scared of heights!’

The OUGC fly from Bicester Airfield, which is located half an hour North of Oxford. To find out more, visit their website.