[Cloudsdale] Race Day

Corsair lowered his flight goggles into place as he waited at the starting line. He gave a wings a brief stretch as he waited for the starting flag. Tense with anticipation, he focuses on his mental map of the racecourse ahead. He'd studied it enough to know it in his sleep, but he always mentally flew through the course before actually flying it. "First ring, 20 yards straight ahead. Second Ring, right 12 degrees, 25 yards. Third ring, down 20 degrees, left 10 degrees..." went the recitation in his head. Finally, the green flag dropped!

Corsair launched off the line. Making precise turns, he navigated through the race course. A flare of his wing here, a bank there, a climbing turn. Finally, after 20 of the aerial rings, he once again crossed the start / finish line. Flaring his wings hard, he came to a stop near the official's booth. "Time?" he shouted to the pony in the booth.

"12:42," says the pegasus holding a stopwatch.

"Meh, not terrible," Corsair mumbled. He should have been able to get at least 12 seconds faster than that. He flapped over into the open booth and removed his goggles. He picked up his cap with the EPRL (Equestrian Pegasus Racing League) logo on it and placed it on his head. He looked down at a cloud table where a diagram of the racecourse was laid out. Taking a quill in his teeth, he started making notes on the diagram. "Ok, we need to get the track maintenance ponies out to turn 7. The ring is out of alignment by about 6 degrees, and needs to come down by 2 hooves," he says to the assembled race officials. "After that, the course should be ready for race day tomorrow!"

Corsair gazed across the track at the empty clouds that would be the stands for the race tomorrow. Soon enough, they'd be filled with cheering ponies all there to support their favorite racers. The Cloudsdale Raceway was the biggest track on the circuit, and the most permanent. The EPRL could set up a race course over nearly any city given enough notice, but the facilities in Cloudsdale were always maintained, just the track layout was changed. All around him, Corsair could see pegasus ponies prepping for tomorrow. Ticket booths, concessions, and souvenir booths all had to be set up. Down below, he could see ponies setting up large balloons to ferry earth ponies and unicorns to the stands. There were even unicorns down there to cast a cloudwalking spell on the non-pegasus ponies.

Corsair wasn't a racer himself... well not a professional anyway, but he still loved being involved in the sport. As a race official, he got to test the track before a race to make sure that the design was correct, and safe for the racers. The placement of the rings that denoted the turns should be just right, cloud banks needed to be positioned so that anypony that missed a turn had something soft to land in.

Surveying all the work around him, it looked to Corsair that everything would be ready right on time for tomorrow. This should be the biggest race yet!

((OOC: This post started writing itself after a while, and I realized I was setting myself up to host an entire race for this thread... If anyone is interested in helping me with something like this I'd appreciate it.))

A light blue pegasus sat in the stands, grinning as he watched the track getting set up. To him, this was another form of flying show, albeit one focused more on speed and competition than showmanship and cooperation. And though not many ponies knew it, Soarin' loved showing up to watch the races when he had the time, and being a Wonderbolt (even out of uniform) gave him a few perks like being able to watch the course get set up.

And watch he did! The pegasus running the course was good! Not the same kind of good that the Wonderbolts took, but that didn't mean Soarin' couldn't appreciate it when he saw it. He'd have to remember a few of those movements, maybe he could show them to the Team to get their timing better!