Who’s the World’s Best Pilot?
1997 World Paragliding Championship -- Castejon de Sos, Spain

 By Paul Klemond, US Team Leader

Who’s the best pilot in the world? Striving for that title, seven Americans joined 175 other pilots from 35 countries who gathered in Spain this past July for the World Paragliding Championship. This year’s Worlds (for short) were held in Castejon de Sos (pronounced Cast-a-hone duh Sose), a small town in Spain’s central Pyrenees mountains near the border with France. Among paragliding and hang gliding pilots, Castejon is famous for its rugged treeless mountains and strong thermals.

1997 US Paragliding Team Pilots

The seven pilots who made the US team all qualified by accumulating the most points in the competitions sanctioned by USHGA and held during the 1995 and 1996 seasons, the two years preceding the 1997 World Championship. I’ve given up on ever being a competition pilot, but I jumped at the chance when Ed Pitman told me the team was looking for a leader. The team welcomed me, and it was one of the best experiences of my life. Not only are these pilots amazingly skilled aviators, they are also eager to share their knowledge and way fun to hang out with.

As with competitions in other forms of aviation, the “best” paraglider pilot would be the one who races the fastest around a long course. Over a thirteen day period, competitors flew eight tasks, each of which was a race around a different set of turnpoints forming a course with an average distance of about 50 miles. That’s a lot of miles on a paraglider!

SPECTACULAR – AND HAZARDOUS

The start of each task was a truly spectacular event: several acres of the launch slope are covered with wings, pilots and gear. An ambulance siren sounds to officially open the “launch window.” Within moments the first gliders pull up and are off. In less than five minutes, most of the field of 181 gliders launched. It was dizzying!

As I helped Lizzy Opitz prepare to launch before one task, a yell caused me to look up in time to see a very banked glider low and coming our way. I knew it would miss us, but then I noticed the pilot might not! So Lizzy and I ducked. I felt the wake as the pilot whizzed by just over our heads, then heard and felt the earth beneath my feet “thump” as the pilot “cratered in” about eight feet from where we stood! The unlucky pilot from the Japanese team had taken a deflation and crashed, knocking the wind out of him. I tried to calm him and keep his helmet on until medical help arrived, but the Japanese team leader arrived first and tore the helmet off – pretty ignorant I thought! Everything turned out all right, but from that day on we all had to keep “heads up” on launch! Many pilots launched above us on the shallow slope, and came skimming through just one or two meters above the ground.

Once launched the pilots would all glide toward one of two nearby spines where thermals lurked. Thermals are invisible, but when over 100 gliders work the same thermal, an amazing swirling colorful picture of it emerges. Once high, the pilots must hang out or seek an advantageous position to be in when the start tarp opens, beginning the race.

The tasks were tough, chosen by a group of three elected competitors to be so challenging that most pilots wouldn’t reach goal: on average, only 37 out of 181 competitors (that’s 20%) reached goal during each task. The winners were in the air for an average of more than three hours each task – and those were just the earliest to land at goal.

On most days, at least one pilot descended under reserve parachute. During one especially difficult task, five of these world-class pilots threw their reserve parachutes including former US Champion Dave Bridges. (Dave landed unharmed.) As though that weren’t enough for one task, two more pilots crashed on mountainsides, including one former World Champion. There were no fatalities, but several serious injuries the worst of which was a Taiwanese woman who is paralyzed. Serious injuries are a very unfortunate element that seems inherent in paragliding competition.

AND THE WINNER IS…

So, who is the best pilot in the world? Britain’s John Pendry is the new World Champion, beating Austria’s Christian Tamegger by a mere 20 points, 7582 to 7562. That’s a margin of 0.3%, kind of like the Lakers beating the Knicks 100.3 to 100. Even though it was a race, consistency mattered much more than being first: Tamegger took second overall but won only one task. Pendry took first and didn’t win any tasks! Both of them won by consistently reaching goal task after task.

How did the US team do? By any measure, amazingly well:

·        Overall the US team finished in 6^th place out of 36 countries competing.

·        Three US pilots received awards for finishing in the top 30.

·        For the first time in history, a US pilot (Josh Cohn) won 1^st place in a task.

·        Of the 172 pilots flying the last task, only 11% (20 pilots) reached goal. Of these, four were US pilots. (Todd Bibler 3^rd, Othar Lawrence 6^th, Dave Bridges 15^th, and Josh Cohn 18^th.)

·        Safety: US pilots suffered no flying-related injuries.

It’s been said that when it comes to paragliding, the US was viewed as a third-world country. As of this competition, that seems no longer to be true. (The US didn’t even send a team to the previous World Championship in 1995, and sent a three-person team to the 1993 Worlds.)

Team Results

Individual Pilot Results

Women’s Results  

The intensity of this competition is evident not only in the close scores and many reserve rides, but also in the highly specialized flying gear these competitors use. It seems every component has been specialized or modified to reduce wind resistance and eke out that extra bit of speed and glide that will bring the pilot to goal a few meters ahead of the next pilot:

·        High-aspect-ratio “twitchy” competition paragliders rated DHV-3, or AFNOR Competition, or uncertified prototypes;

·        Diagonal “ribs” (fabric panels) between the glider’s cell walls, allowing the use of fewer lines. (The Firebird Cult for instance has only two lower A-lines on each side!)

·        “Skinny” lines of unsheathed kevlar, looks and feels like dental floss;

·        Risers half the normal breadth, or replaced entirely with thin steel cable;

·        Flat supine racing harnesses in which the pilot flies lying on his/her back;

·        Heavy ballast bags full of water, to make the glider fly faster;

·        “Speed-arms” – lycra half-shirts that tightly cover sleeves and shoulders;

·        Helmets pointed at the rear for smoother airflow and less drag;

·        Fashionable tightly curved sunglasses, for lower wind resistance I’m sure!

Before you trade in your normal gear for this stuff and aim to become a serious competition pilot, it’s worth weighing the risks: it’s very unusual to find a pilot at this level of competition who hasn’t been injured or had a reserve deployment or two. Excluding visiting foreign pilots, three of the five US pilots killed while paragliding in the US in the past 18 months were flying high-performance DHV-3 gliders. Two of the seven US team pilots have been seriously injured in the US after their return from the Worlds in July (one while competing, one not.) There are lots of factors in most accidents, but it’s probably safe to conclude that competition gear and competitive pressure increase the level of risk in paragliding. Admiring the incredible talents of competition pilots does not require emulating them.

International Competition

It’s easy to confuse the World Championship with the PWC, or “Paragliding World Cup”. The latter is a series of half a dozen meets held during every year in places all around the world, governed by the PWC Congress. The World Championship on the other hand is held every two years (during odd-numbered years), with a pre-Worlds practice meet during intervening years at the site of the following year’s meet. The Worlds (short for the World Championship) are governed by the FAI (Federation Aeronautique Internationale), which also oversees other activities (such as world records verification) for paragliding and all other kinds of aviation. Many pilots (including a few US pilots) compete in both the PWC and World Championship. 

To compete in the World Championship, a pilot must qualify for his or her nation’s official team. Each country sends a team of its top-ranked pilots. This year the teams were allowed seven pilots at most, no more than five of which could be of the same gender. Here in the US, rankings are compiled from the results of all the USHGA-approved competitions held during the previous two years (the 1995 and 1996 seasons in this case.)

The next Pre-Worlds will be held in Pinzgau, Austria next spring, May 30 – June 9, 1998. The next World Championship will be held there in summer 1999. Qualification for the 1999 US team will be based on pilot competition results from all USHGA-sanctioned meets held during the 1997 and 1998 seasons, including the 1997 US National Championship that was held August 16 – 23 this past summer at King Mountain, Idaho. The USHGA competition committee will listen to proposals and sanction 1998 season competitions during the November board meeting.

Visit the Website

For complete scores, team info and lots of photos from the competition, check out the US team’s official site on the Internet’s World Wide Web. See http://www.kurious.org.

Thanks!

The US team would like to express great appreciation for the pilots and businesses in the US paragliding community for your amazing support. By purchasing T-shirts, attending the Aspen fund-raiser and buying raffle tickets, you enabled the best US pilots to attend and compete and do so well. Thank you!

Chris Santacroce deserves a special appreciation for putting in an amazing amount of time and sweat organizing a fundraiser event for the team during the Aspen SuperClinic in June. Greg Smith and Edel USA also really came through to make this event a success!

The following businesses, clubs and individuals gave generously to the US team:

Apco / Aerolight USA

Aspen Paragliding Club

Ball Varios

Cascade Paragliding Club of Portland, Oregon

Robin Cohn

Joe Gluzinski / Air America Paragliding

Lars Linde / Nocai Helmets

Northwest Paragliding Club of Seattle, Washington

Steve Roti

John Yates / Pro-Design

I personally would like to thank Ed Pitman and Lee Kaiser for sharing with me some insights from their experience flying as a team and competing in earlier international competitions.

Lastly, the team would like to thank USHGA. Phil Bachman made a special trip to Aspen to speak at the Aspen fund-raiser. Less visible but of great importance was the behind-the-scenes support of Greg Huller and Karen Simon. You are very much “part of the team.”

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About the Author: Paul Klemond is a tandem instructor and mountain pilot living in Seattle, Washington. Email him at “paul@kurious.org”.