This was a veritable Who’s Who of competition Paragliding. Every person you spoke to was the Champion of something. The Team member of their country, the designer or test pilot top wings. It was an honour to fly amongst them, until the sods starting crashing into me!! There were mid airs all the time on every task; the flying was aggressive to the degree of stupidity. The launch mountain was cross wind so the R10 dance was a sight to see. Our own Adrian Thomas tripped on launch, hitting a rock face first, missing task 1 and getting 40 stitches in his upper lip for good measure. He soldiered on, but I’m sure he was suffering, especially when he had a mid air on task 6, completely the other pilots fault.
The task setting was questionable to say the least, with strong winds forecast; they tasked us back into 40kph winds!! With classic skies downwind, it was very upsetting to have to turn back into wind, pushing into lee side rotor above shaded trees!!
All in all, 7 tasks of varying quality revealed a worthy winner in the very friendly French pilot Yann Martail. With
For Team
This is what you have to do to make the British Paragliding Team! 5 or 6 top comps and do very well in them. It’s a lot of dedication and even more skill and bravery.
Even if this does make Skywings, it’ll probably be skipped over to read about someone’s first 10k XC or ridge run in
Comp 5 The British Open St Andre les Alpes. Every paraglider pilot should fly in St Andre les Alpes!! It is an incredible place, surrounded by the rugged dry mountains of the southern Alps. The views, thermal strengths and transitions are simply breath taking. My family love the mountain biking, via ferratas, white water rafting the Verdon Gorge and swimming in the lakes. This comp was one of the biggest comps of the season with a very high pilot quality and the final leg of the British Championships. Jamie was the man to beat and Craig and I set about doing just that. Another strong team of French pilots could not knock our very own Russell Ogden off his perch as he won most tasks. Pierre Remy and I won the other two tasks, but after 6 scores Russ won the Open, with a brilliant 3rd spot for a consistent Mark Watts??
The other story lay in the British Championships, with Jamie Messenger feeling the pressure of the chasing pack; he choked at the run for the line. On the penultimate day both Craig and Jamie bombed as I took the lead and won the task from Luc Armont.
11 tasks and 11000 points scored, Craig and I were only 7 points apart. The closest fought championship in history. The final day saw marginal conditions, but I had the lead and with it the British Championships!! Then the call, ‘Task Stopped’ we had to land, but with more than half the task flown, I thought I’d won it! Back at HQ, they were scoring the task…… Yes, I’ve won it!! Only to be told that the score will be used in the Open but not for the British Championships! Some rule in sub section 8b(i) or something, meant a controversial task would upset the controversial discard system, so they would not count it.
Craig Morgan won, with me once again vice champ and Jamie in third. An incredible pull back by Mark Watts, to climb up to 4th. Adam Hill achieved 5th and our hearts go out to Chris Harland who flew a blinding campaign but got no luck in his lead out bombs ended in 6th. A big mention has to go to Emile Van Wyke, flying a Serial Class Gin GTO nicked 7th place off a comp wing chasing pack and our girl Kirsty Cameron nearly got into the British Top Ten, again on Serial Class Advance Omega 8
THE GERMAN OPEN in FIESCHE SWITZERLAND. (photo by Marin Scheel of Azoom,com)Every paraglider pilot should fly in Fiesche
