The World Air Games has begun with warm, sunny weather and ideal wind conditions for the first solo task, with 20 pilots from 12 nations!

The location of the paragliding acro competition is close to Avigliana, and all pilots are starting D-bag jumping out from a helicopter over a small lovely lake. The first task was already a free announced program with 5 maneuvers. Unfortunately in the beginning the helicopter pilot was flying too fast during the drops, and the high airspeed caused extreme openings and damaged Hernan Pittoco's and Pál Takáts's glider. Pittoco got a hole on the upper surface of his wing, which he wasn't able to realize in the air, he could only feel that his glider is not working perfectly and his Rythmic SAT did not work well. The glider of Pál ripped on the bottom-middle, so he just pulled big-ears and landed dry on the raft to be able to re-run quickly as last in the run with the wing of his teammate, Gábor Kézi (D-bag packed in 7 minutes :-)). The godfather of acro, Raul Rodriguez is back again in the competition scene with his own new glider, the Radix. Unluckily some of his lines got entangled during his D-bag opening, which he only realized after starting his first helicopter, afterwards had to stop his routine. After everybody landed, a briefing was held where the pilots voted for letting Pittoco and Raul to repeat their run tomorrow, in the beginning of the first synchro task. Therefore the results will be only published tomorrow afternoon.
Since there aren't any rules regarding helicopter jumps and possible invisible damages after a strong opening, the pilots agreed that it is advised to perform a "test" maneuver (which cannot be the same as the first announced trick!) before starting the routine to see that the canopy and the lines are all ok. Then the pilot shows the sign of the start of his/her run by closing the ear on one side and after can start the program.
During the first briefing on saturday evening, the pilots also voted against some of the new acrobatics rules for 2009, for example everybody agreed that all the coefficients of the tricks should stay like it was last year (in the new Sporting Code most of the helicopter connections were reduced, actually without a good reason). For 2009 one of the other big change is regarding the connection of the transition maneuvers, like performing Tumbling to Infinity, Rythmic to Infinity or helico tricks like SAT to Helico to Heli to SAT or Helico to Helico to SAT, which in a way gives the pilot one maneuver for "free"...From now on, all the maneuvers have to be performed separately, which means they all have to have an entry and an exit, so the pilots have to stop and enter the next maneuver again. The reason for this is that it became incredibly difficult for the judges to score these kind of connected figures. At the same time it increased the gap between the pilots who are doing Infinity Tumbling and those who are not. However, even the judges agree that this is not the nicest solution and some developments should be done to improve the Sporting Code and make it up to date. During the week the pilots and the judges will have a meeting to discuss all the ideas and creat new rules for the future.

The program will continue tomorrow with the first Synchro task, look out for results at:
http://www.wag2009.com/eng/results/index.htm

The most important Sport Aviation event in the world starts on Saturday (6th of Jun), representing all airsport disciplines from balloning through aeromodelling, gliding, till parachuting and last but not least, for the first time: acrobatics paragliding, both in solo and synchro categories!

Every day, the public will enjoy competitions, demonstrations, air shows, simulations. For one week, the best athletes in the world will confront each other, with fairness - in the third dimension.

Over 500 athletes representing the hundred federations member of FAI (Fédération Aéronautique Internationale), 1.500 including officials, technicians and competition judges, 300.000 spectators forecasted over the three competition sites and more than 200 millions worldwide television contacts. Here they are the numbers of the Torino 2009 World Air Games. (The main event venues will be Torino-Aeritalia airport of Collegno, Avigliana and Mondovì).

Click here to download the complete competition schedule!

The invited paragliding acro pilots are:

Argentina - PITOCCO Hernan
Austria - HORNBOECK Bernd
Austria - MESCHUH Alexander
Brazil - BRAGA Mauricio Galvão Junior
Bulgaria - METODIEV Metodi A.
Denmark - SOERENSEN Dennis Wolthers
Macedonia - VELJANOVSKI Mendo
France - MONTANT Antoine
France - PLANTON Cyril
Hungary - KÉZI Gábor
Hungary - TAKÁTS Pál
Italy - DALL'OGLIO Massimo
Italy - PATUZZI Enrico
Norway - HAMMAR ROGNØY Pål
Spain - LLORENS FERNANDEZ Horacio
Spain - RODRIGUEZ Felix
Spain - RODRIGUEZ FERNANDEZ Raúl Iván
Switzerland - BARMAN Céline
Switzerland - CERUTTI Hervé
USA - DASALLA Nova

For more information visit:
http://www.worldairgames.org/
http://www.wag2009.com/eng/

Interlaken, May 30, 2009 – The projection of the Nissan Outdoor Games official film selection took place Saturday evening in front of six thousand spectators in awe, for a breathtaking show in the center of Interlaken. The Finnish team, GOLGOHT, won the GoldenPeak, the award that given to the best film of this 2009 edition. For their first time participating, the Swiss team, Natural Born Flyers, was given the Jury’s Special Award as well as the Best Sports Sequence for climbing scene with Cyril Albasini. The Finn, Petri Kovalainen from the Golgoht team, won the Best Photographer award as well as the Game of Light Award by Julbo.

The task for the five teams from all over Europe was challenging: to produce a 5-minute short film in 7 days including 5 outdoor sports in the Interlaken region. The best athletes of each discipline as well as the impressive film production crews went all out at the Nissan Outdoor Games...

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...

As you might noticed the website was "suspended" and shut down again by our webhosting provider, due to the reason the we used too much of their resources, they said...

But now, thanks to our rescue angel, Panzar who offered his private server in Germany to be the new home of justACRO, the site is back up again and will be never restricted again in the future!

A big-big thanks to him once more in the name of the crew and the community!