Master of the wave Terry Delore with Rod Dew.

Master of the wave : Terry Delore with Rod Dew.

Publisher Christchurch, N.Z. : Delmore Enterprises, 2005, first edition. VERY SCARCE.

Good hardback with jacket, some bumping to edges; sellotape marks to boards and end-papers; no inscriptions; abrasion inside rear board; some corner creasing; minor marks. Jacket has some shelf-wear with chipping to edges. 182 pages with photos.

New Zealander Terry Delore is one of the finest soaring pilots of all time. In sheer natural ability, he has no equals. At the last count, he had broken 26 world records in a variety of sailplanes, setting new standards which rival pilots can only admire. Delore first hit the international headlines when he came from nowhere to win the 1976 world hang gliding championship in Austria. He was only 17. Since the inevitable move to flying the more sophisticated sailplanes, he has won eight national gliding championships, represented New Zealand at the world gliding championships four times, and continued to push back the barriers of soaring flight. When he flew 2049.44 km along New Zealand's Southern Alps in November 1994, it was the longest soaring flight ever achieved. This also earned him gliding immortality as the first to break the 2000 km barrier in a 15 m single-seat sailplane. The international gliding community recognized this by presenting him the sport's most prized award, the Lilienthal Medal. His distance stood as the outright record for some years, but it has now been extended to 3009 km by a German soaring rival. It is Terry Delore's ambition to regain his record. Because of the relatively small land-mass of New Zealand, gliding more than 3000 km was always going to be difficult. His focus switched to Argentina, and the massive wave which rolls off the towering Andes mountain range.

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