14 years ago
After many successful editions of the RedBull Vertigo, then Vertigo Swiss Riviera, the city of Villeneuve at the lake of Geneva now hosted the Sonchaux Acro Show for the second time (Sonchaux is the name of the mountain where the pilots fly from).
The event is all about the show, but also a new kind of acro competition with 12 of the best pilots in the World and 4 wild cards for swiss pilots. The concept is simple: 2 pilots fly out at the same time for a "battle". The winner continues and the looser is out of the competition...
In the beginning they have to perform some compulsory maneuvers given by the jury (it looks like they are flying synchro and it is easy to compare their precision), then they are free to continue their flight with a freestyle program and landing. Just a minute after the landing the jury makes its decision which pilot was better, considering the technical execution, choreography, connections and overall impression all together.
First the 16 pilots were randomly selected into 4 groups with 4 pilots. All pilots in the same group flew "against" each other to create a ranking inside the groups. After this the 3. and the 4. placed pilots were out and other 8 pilot continues with direct eliminations towards the quarter-finals, semi-finals, and finally the Grand Final! As there were less and less pilots the difficulty of the compulsory maneuvers were also rising all the way till Infinity.
The organization did their best to entertain the spectators and to even involve them in the game. There was a huge projector on the beach with LIVE coverage from the take-off place, introducing and interviewing the pilots for the next battle, just before they started. Beside the jury, the public also had the chance to steer the results a little bit. After each landing the people had to applause for both pilots separately and the one who got the bigger applause (measured by a machine) received one point more.
Beside this there were a bunch of other side-acts going on all day long, like skydiving, base jumping, speedriding, woopy, aeroplane acrobatics, night show, etc...
Check out the photos of Olivier Graf on his website!
Top 4 results of the competition:
1. Hernan Pitocco
2. Baptiste Rousset
3. Horacio Llorenz
4. Félix Rodriguez
