My second Paragliding World Cup was great fun; there were two tricky thunderstorm affected tasks at the start of the week, then some windy and stormy rest days to get us keen, and then two fast racing tasks of 101km and 121km in blue conditions which took the winners 2hrs 34mins and 3hrs 7mins to complete. There is a lot to learn about flying at this level; it was interesting to observe some of the differences in flying styles of the top pilots. The Brazilians got a big cheer at the prizegiving; they were pushing out front of the gaggles in all the tasks and ended up taking 2 of the top 3 places. I was lucky that task 2, which I flew badly, was stopped due to rain on the course line and was happy to end up 19th overall out of 120 pilots.
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| Storm-chasing on T2, pic by Phillipe Broers |
