Competitions

The final schedule of the 2009 season with the most important competitions:

3rd World Air Games - 6-13th Jun, Torino
For the first time of the WAG history, paragliding acrobatics is there next to all kind of air-sport disciplines you can imagine...For invited pilots only.
www.wag2009.com/eng

Aerobatics Paragliding World Cup Tour 2009:

Acroaria - 6-9th August - Omegna, Italy
Pre-World Championships
www.acroaria.it

Paranoia Acrobatixx - 17-19th July - Zell am See, Austria
www.acro.cc

(Cancelled APWC events: Acroattack, Vertigo, Acrolac)

Other competitions:

Wagas Festival - 27-30th May
The well known freestyle competition at the Dune du Pyla, France
http://wagas-festival.com/

DOWNTEAM challenge 2009 - 6-9th August - Åre, Sweden
Open Nordic Championships
www.downteam.com/challenge2009/

The Norwegian Open FAI cat2 competitions - diverse locations
A great opportunity pilots who want to get started with competitions to gain world ranking points!
www.norwegian-corax.no/frame_comps.html

Today the organizing comittee officially announced - without notifying a certain reason - that Vertigo, the biggest acro compettion of all times is not going to be held this year.
The acro scene is pretty much surprised of these news, especially after 11 successful editions of the competition...

However, they promised that the event will definitely return in the 2010 season.

Rumours also say that this year the Acroattack contest in Türkey will not be held as well...

"For the second year in a row, Antoine Montant (France) pockets the highest distinction for a speed flyer. He won it wednesday after the Big Mountain contest of the Speed Flying Pro, the most important speed flying competition which took place in les Arcs. Mickaël Régnier is second and Yoan Castagnoli third.
On the Aiguille Rouge, Antoine Montant displayed his famous combination of daring piloting, strong skiing, surprising choice of line and uncompromising risk taking.
Today in the Big Mountain contest, the speed flyers had to find their way on the mountain being noted by a jury. Antoine Montant's first place today, combined with his third yesterday in the speed cross, paved the way for a victory... only, and only if his rival Yoan Castagnioli finished third or below. This is exactly what happened.
The young speed flyer threw in a conservative line. Castagnoli wanted, above all, to cross the finish line, and avoid repeating last year scenario where he fell in the first part of the same run. He finished 11th of the Big Mountain and 3rd overall.
The outsider Mickaël Regnier, competing for the first time in the Speed Flying Pro, was the most consistent : 2nd in the speed cross and 5th in the big mountain which landed him 2nd on the overall ranking."

For more infos, pictures and videos visit: speedflyingpro.com

With Acroaria in the lovely town of Omegna (Italy) the World Cup Series were over for this season.
All the pilots were training hard for this last competition, and most of the top ranked were there so we can say it was the strongest event of the summer. The weather was not ideal, so it was only possible to finish 2-2 runs in each category. Félix Rodriguez (SP) just a few weeks earlier became a father (congratulations!) so he did not go Paranoia, but returned here with and won in solo with great confidence! However, after the first run, Cyrille Planton (FRA) took the lead 3 points ahead (!), but in the second run several diagonals exploded in his wing during a Tumbling figure, and he could not finish the rest of the maneuvers so he fell back to the 17th place...Not a surprise, that Horacio Llorens (SP) finished second maintaining his great form! Till now Antoine Montant (FRA) was pretty busy working on his french ski instructor licence and then with some tandem flights, but finally he also arrived to Omegna just to make one competition for fun. He is a guy who doesn't need to train to perform at top level at any time. Now he prooved this again and came on the 3rd place. Wouldn't forget to say a word about the performance of the austrian Alexander Meschuh who made his careeer's best ever solo results during this season (here 4th) and Yoan Castegnoli who - I guess - pissed off all the other french guys with his 5th place!
Click for detailed solo results!

No big surprises in the synchro category, the results:
1. SATisfaction (Horacio Llorens, Hernan Pittoco) 159,14 pts
2. Joker (Gábor Kézi, Cyrille Planton) 154,97 pts
3. Against the Grain (Alexander Meschuh, Bernd Hornböck) 152, 10 pts
Click for detailed synchro results!

Solo:
2 ladies in the TOP 10! However Céline was one of the big surprises of the season, the japanese girl Seiko showed that with elegant style and many years of routine and experience it is hard to catch up, even for most of the mans!!!
Horacio Llorens won the most runs in the year (what means maximum score, 100 points for each run), all together 5 which obviously gave him the crown! His team partner Hernan Pittoco finished 2nd and Alexander Meschuh 3rd with no run victories, but a very stable performance during the whole season.

During 4 events 13 successful runs were held which means the points of the worst 4 run from each pilot are removed to calculate the final results (see the uncut points between the brakets). Of course no points are cutted from those pilots, who completed 9 or only less runs.

1. Horacio Llorens - Spain (1279,9) 894,6 pts
2. Hernan Pitocco - Argentina (1241,3) 875,9 pts
3. Alexander Meschuh - Austria (1201,9) 853,1 pts
4. Cyrill Planton - France (906,0) 850,1 pts
5. Cyrille Marck - France (861,9) 797,6 pts
6. Bernd Hornboeck - Austria (1026,9) 793,9 pts
7. Gabor Kezi - Hungary (870,6) 791,4 pts
8. Seiko Fukuoka - Japan (780,0) 722,3 pts
9. Celine Barmann - Switzerland (783,5) 710,6 pts
10. Renato Lopez - Brazil (708,4) 708,4 pts
...
63 pilots from 20 nations on the list.
Click for the complete solo results

Synchro:

On only 2 events 6 valid runs were held. Points of the 2 worst runs are removed from each team.

1. Satisfaction - Horacio Llorens, Hernan Pitocco (599,7) 400,0 pts
2. Joker - Cyril Planton, Gabor Kezi (577,8) 393,8 pts
3. Funky Spin - Baptiste Rousset, Alexandre Aimard (551,4) 377,8 pts
4. Against the Grain - Bernd Hornboeck, Alexander Meschuh (537,4) 372,2 pts
5. Les Blues de l'acopalypse - Guillaume Chatain, Emanuel Chanceaux (369,9) 369,9 pts
6. Picon Brothers - Cyrille Marck, Pascal Marck (531,5) 361,8 pts
7. Spalti Acro Team - Christian Maurer, Peter Neuenschwander (350,3) 350,3 pts
8. Against the Grain Jr - Sebastian Kahn, Ricky Kahn (514,0) 349,3 pts
9. Nendacroteam - Celine Barmann, Herve Cerutti (334,2) 334,2 pts
10. Titty Twisters - Andre Bernhard, Gregory Rondel (431,1) 324,2 pts
...
17 teams in the ranking
Click for the complete synchro results

Congratulations to all the pilots and teams!

Despite the not ideal weather conditions the 4th Paranoia in Zell am See, Austria was a really succesfull event. 4 valid runs out of 4 days with 36 pilots + a freestlye expression session on the sunny saturday afternoon with the best 15 pilots mixed with some base jump demos, out of the helicopter at 1000m over the lake.

Due to the low height difference of the take-off places here the pilots have to perform 3 maneuvers (which means only the first one can be Tumbling or Infinity) and they were allowed to choose their free program right from the first run.

The audience could see some hot situations and reserve deployments for example on Friday, when Dennis Sørensen falled straight into his canopy from the exit of an extremely dynamic Tumbling at 300 meters...

Horacio continues to perform his best in this season and finished first many points ahead his followers. Thanks to not only his precisely executed maneuvers, but also the great ground spiral landings whereafter 3 out of 4 times he landed dry on the small raft, however the conditions were not optimal - almost zero wind all the time !
Seiko Fukuoka showed to the boys how to make nice helicopter combinations and finished 10th overall and 1st between the womans.

1. Horacio Llorens (SP, SOL Supersonic, 357,38 pts)
2. Hernan Pittoco (AR, SOL Supersonic, 339,98 pts)
3. Cyril Planton (FR, Team5 Black, 334,98 pts)
4. Alexander Meschuh (AT, Icaro Nikita, 325,05 pts)
5. Renato Lopez (BR, SOL Supersonic, 315,73 pts)
6. Hornböck Bernd (AT, U-Turn Morpheus, 312,95 pts)
7. Kezi Gabor (HUN, U-Turn Morpheus, 307,90 pts)
8. Schrittwieser Marcell (AT, SOL Supersonic, 301,96 pts)
9. Marck Pascal (FR, Ozone FLX, 300,08 pts)
10. Seiko Fukuoka (JP, U-Turn G-Force, 291,08 pts)
...
Detailed results here

For more information and upcoming photos, videos visit: www.acro.cc

Actual FAI World Ranking (results after Vertigo Swiss Riviera)

Last but not least ,after a 2 month long break I made my first flight out of the helicopter on saturday and did a nice synchro session together with Gábor! It was awesome to be in the air again and see that the maneuvers are still working :-)

Since there are no words about the competition on the official website, I could only ask a friend from Ölüdeniz to tell me at least the top 3 results, here they are:

1. Hernan Pittoco (AR)
2. Horacio Llorens (SP)
3. Alexander Meschuh (AT)
4. Michael Knipping (DE)
5. Gillaume Cornet (FR)

Detailed results here!