This year's first APWC event, Vertigo Swiss Riviera, the biggest and oldest acro competition will be held this week for the 11th time in Villeneuve, Switzerland! Beside the World Cup it will be also the 1st Swiss Championship.
Today is the pilot registration and the first briefing for all the solo, synchro and the few hangglider pilots. This year the main focus is on the synchro category, however there will be also 30 of the world's best solo pilots competing. The level is getting higher and higher so it will be interesting to watch the upcoming young talents, fighting against the pro's.

At the weekend we will also see a new concept of competition, with only a limited amount of invited solo pilots and synchro teams (the best 18 pilot and 8 teams, based on the FAI World Ranking). They will be completely free to choose their choreography to impress the public with original ideas and spectacular moves. 2 pilots/teams will form couples and they will compete against each other, elliminating the opponent directly. Beside the 2-3 FAI judges other VIP's and invited guests will score these runs and the results will be published right after the runs. See the detailed rules of the "Open" competition here.

After a one year break the organizers of the Wagas Festival decided to make this great event again, for the 5th time at the Dune du Pyla, France, the highest dune in Europe.

Once again, the Sup'air team pilot Charlie Piccolo, the king of the Dune was unbeatable!

1. Piccolo Charlie
2. Boisselier Antoine
3. Assael Niko
4. Chatain Bertrand
5. Pluvieux Harold
6. Cau Vincent
7. Ostermann Pierre
8. Gallon Richard
9. Fourcroy Frédéric
10. Fritz Olivier
...

Visit:
www.wagas-festival.com

Just a few days before the competition would start the organization cancelled the first APWC event, due to the bad weather forecast for the weekend. This would be the 7th Acrolac and during it's history the event always suffered by relatively bad weather conditions (the best was in 2007 so far with 2 valid solo and 3 synchro runs). After the 2nd Acro World Championsip in Voss, this is now the second competition of the season which won't be held, but as I know the first ever which was cancelled because of the weather forecast...

Read the official release:

"Because of the very unfavourable weather conditions, we inform you the cancellation of Acrolac 2008

We thank the volunteers, the pilots, the institutionals, the advertisers and the sponsors for their invaluable support

For logistic reasons it is impossible for us to defer Acrolac this year we give you appointment for the year 2009.

The Steering Committee"

Visit Acrolac's official website

After starting the new justACRO site it took a while for us to find the best solution for the Videos page. In the last months behind the scenes we tested some different solutions till we found the best one that really fits our needs. The goal was to make this - important - section of the website attractive, easy-to-use and keep it always refreshing that our visitors feel it is worthy to check back time to time for new, interesting clips, movies.

Now as a registered user, you can simply add new videos to the collection by filling out a submit form which takes just a few minutes. You can link videos from any popular video sharing sites just as Vimeo, YouTube, MySpace, Dailymotion, Google, MetaCafe Revver, GUBA, IMEEM, JumpCut, Blip.tv, Brightcove, Last.fm, Live Video, Sevenload, Spike TV, Tudou, Veoh, and more...!
(We recommend Vimeo, because it's better quality.)

We would like to make most of the videos also available to download to your computer, however, we know that these video sharing systems normally does not support that. For this reason, justACRO provides a public, unlimited FTP access to upload the original video files in high quality.
(FTP server: ftp.justacro.com, USER: videoupload@justacro.com, PASSWORD: videoupload).

Please notice that all uploaded movies will pass through a moderation by the admins before publishing, because we would like to keep up a good level of quality videos.

Since the system is brand new, you are testing it now, so please if you experience any errors, or if you have any suggestions contact us or leave a message here! Thanks!

Let the fun begin!

Last sunday while training I suffered an accident in Stechlberg, Switzerland by ground-spiralling over high-grass. I went too low, my wingtip caught the flowers and pulled me down...I hit the ground first with my left foot which broke in the impact. A few hours later I passed through an operation to fix the bones in my ankle (with 3 screws) and the blood circulation in my feet, then I spent 4 more days in the hospital.
Fortunately up to now I almost didn't have any pain, however it is much harder to deal with the exasperation and disappointment I feel now, but I try to get read of it quickly and focus only on a fast recovery and return to the sport as soon as possible.

Thanks for the selfness support of my girlfriend, family, friends and last but not least our sponsors, to help my way back.

He promised and he did it! On Sunday Chrigel Maurer world class XC and acro pilot broke his own unofficial Infinity record, as he announced it a few days earlier in the local newspapers. Before the start of the first task of the Paragliding World Cup in Grindenwald, Switzerland, he jumped out of a helicopter at 2400m over the ground and performed 198 revolutions in front of the Eiger's North Face and the eyes of the world's best cross county pilots. He spent 5 minutes and 50 seconds in the neverending trip.
Despite the tricky weather conditions a short but nice task was set where he arrived 4th in the goal, which was in center of Interlaken. As he said in his interview earlier, this is the only World Cup that he takes part this year, since it is his real home playground.
Congratz!

www.chrigelmaurer.ch