Sami Kontio biography
Sami Kontio has achieved a lot during his short competition career. In only three years from receiving his pilot license to become the National Champion and to rise to the top ranks of Advanced pilots in the world is an accomplishment that you not normally see.
"I have always known what I want out of this sport and trained very goal oriented towards it. Today I can say that the first steps has been taken in the long run of achievements I want to accomplish" said Kontio. He's commitment has been high from the beginning. As an example we can tell you that he was a share owner in the Christen Eagle II plane even before he had received he's pilot licence.
Only after 10 flight hours from receiving his licence he managed to grab the silver place at the National Championships in Sportsman class. "That was something I didn't expect but it felt good to be competitive from the beginning" said Sami. The training continued and at the end of the competition season he won the Nordic Championships flying a free program instead of repeating the known on the second flight.
"I flew the Intermediate program after the Nordics but after two flights I felt that it didn't challenge me so I took the Advanced known program and started to practice it" said Sami.
By the end of the season he had mastered the program and made a free that worked for the Christen Eagle II plane he flew. After this he knew that during the 2003 season he would be competing at Advanced level.
The biggest change came when he sold his share in the Eagle and bought himself into the Ultimate 10-300S. Now the performance and energy was there as the right looks to show the judges how correctly you are able to fly the sequences. Now in he's second season he was making huge progress and finished on the 3rd place at the Nationals, 17th at the European Advanced Aerobatic Championships (of 42 competitors) and ending the season one's more on the 3rd place on the podium at the Nordic Championships.
"It was a good and educational season and it left me hungry for more" said Sami.
For the following year he put a lot of thought into the free program. All ready at the Nationals we could see that it had paid off. He won the National Championships, he finished on the 16th place (out of 63) at the Advanced World Aerobatic Championships and flew himself to the 10th place in the free program. This with only 140 flight hours total time.
"I reached one of my targets at the Advanced World Aerobatic Championships by placing in the top ten during a competition flight. In this regard it has been a successful competition but since there were a couple of mistakes that I made I can't say that I'm totally satisfied" said Sami about the result from AWAC 2004.
The final competition for the season was the Nordic Championships but even if the competition was organized twice in both cases it was cancelled due to bad weather.
"I'm sad that we weren't able to finish the Nordic Championships due to bad weather even if we had two try's for it. I felt that I was in a good shape to go for the victory, well at least I have something to aim for during next season" commented Sami.
That was the last time we have seen him in an competition. Unfortunately the rebuild of the plane disturbed the 2005 competition season together with bad weather by the time the plane was to be flown to the Nordics held in Denmark. Now we are waiting for the competition season 2006 to begin since we all know that there is more to come...