Paragliding - Sports/competitive Flying

Sports/competitive Flying

Some pilots like to stretch themselves beyond recreational flying. For such pilots, there are multiple disciplines available:

  • Cross Country Competitions – races around waypoints with typical distances of 50 to 150 kilometers
  • National/international records – despite continually improving gliders, these become ever more difficult to achieve; aside from longest distance and highest altitude, examples include distance to declared goal, distance over triangular course, speed over 100 km triangular course, etc.
  • "Acro" – aero-acrobatic manoeuvres and stunt flying; tricks such as "helicopters", wing-overs, synchro spirals, infinity tumbles, and so on.
  • Cross-country leagues – annual regional, national and worldwide leagues scored based on accumulated best distance flights
  • Accuracy – spot landing competitions where pilots land on targets with a 3 cm centre spot out to a full 10 meter circle.

Competitive flying is done on high performance wings which demand far more skill to fly than their recreational counterparts, but which are far more responsive and offer greater feedback to the pilot, as well as flying faster with better glide ratios.

See also: World Air Games

The current FAI world champion is Charles Cazaux of France; he won the title in July 2011 in Piedrahita, Spain. His predecessor was Andy Aebi of Switzerland, and before him Bruce Goldsmith.

The current Paragliding World Cup (PWC) Champion is Peter Neuenshwander; he won the title in February 2012 in Valle de Bravo, Mexico.

Read more about this topic:  Paragliding

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