WAG - 1st SOLO run

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