The 11th Vertigo in Villeneuve started with excellent weather conditions (30°C, light wind, real summer weather) and after the quick qualification run (3 pilots only) began the first task with compulsory program with the following maneuvers and orders:

in Solo:
1. SAT to Helico
2. Helicopter
3. Asymmetric spiral
4. Dynamic Full Stall

in Synchro:
1. Synchro Spiral
2. Dynamic Full Stall
3. Helicopter
4. SAT

In solo Hervé Cerutti (CH) won with an excellent, clean run. Her girlfriend Celine (CH) finished as the best women with a great flight and took the - even in overall classy - 14th place. By the way, it is her first Vertigo!
Guillaume Chatain (FR) came 3rd with a new Aerodyne Shoot. He landed both in the solo and the synchro run perfectly and dry on the raft but only after his wingtip tasted the water of lake Geneva, I think he got the most points for the landings from all the pilots.

Top10 Solo:
1. CERUTTI HERVE 73,98
2. PITOCCO HERNAN 72,81
3. CHATAIN GILLAUME 72,42
4. LLORENS FERNANDEZ HORACIO 71,99
5. CHRISTIAN MAURER 71,25
6. RODRIGUEZ FELIX
7. MESCHUH ALEXANDER 64,59
8. SCHRITTWIESER MARCELL 64,41
9. NIEDERER REMO 64,15
10. PLANTON CYRILL 63,44

Between the teams SATisfaction took the lead with Horacio Llorens (SP) and Hernan Pittoco (AR) with a nicely synchronized run and ground spiral landings, Horacio also made it to the raft. 2nd Blues team from St. Hilaure du Touvet and 3rd the last minute team, Cyrille Planton (FR) and Gábor Kézi (HU)
As 4th comes the team off Nendacroteam with Celine and Hervé who are probably the first competing mixed team ever. The Spälti Acro Team (Peter Neueschwander and Chrigel Maurer from Switzerland) impressed the public with a nice synchro ground spiral, it is a pity the they both landed in the water at the end.

Top10 Synchro:
1. SATISFACTION (LLORENS FERNANDEZ, HORACIO PITOCCO HERNAN)
2. LES BLUES DE L'APOCALYPSE (CHATAIN GILLAUME. CHANCEAUX EMANUEL)
3. PLANTON / KEZI (PLANTON CYRIL, KEZI GABOR)
4. NENDACROTEAM (CELINE BARMAN, HERVE CERUTTI)
5. AGAINST THE GRAIN (HORNBOECK BERND, MESCHUH ALEXANDER)
6. SPALTI ACRO TEAM (MAURER CHRISTIAN, NEUENSCHWANDER PETER)
7. PICON BROTHERS (MARCK CYRILLE, MARCK PASCAL)
8. KINKY SPIN (ROUSSET BAPTISTE, AIMARD ALEXANDRE)
9. AGAINST THE GRAIN JUNIORS (KAHN SEBASTIAN, KAHN RICKY)
10. TITTY TWISTER (BERNHARD ANDRE, RONDEL GREGORY)

Download the detailed results in PDF format

Pictures by Péter Szabó

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...!
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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.