Paragliding World Cup

The prizegiving was fun - I think 'Doog' will take a while to live down his new nickname....but that's paragliding for you !

Here are our winners in their moment of glory

First, the female podium

From the left - Melanie Pfister (USA), Joanna Di Grigoli (Venezuela / FordEicomCantvColumOakley) and Nicole McClearn.

And now the Open Podium

Nicholas Greece (USA / Eagle Paragliding, Flytec), josh Cohn (USA / Eagle Paragliding) and Yasushi Kobayashi (Japan / Fly Gin)

The video of the prizegiving will be along in a while. We hope you have enjoyed the coverage of the Paragliding World Cup in Chelan. We would like to thank all the local organising team for your help in making this event a success.

Next stop Portugal !

Text by Chris : Photos - xm

It has been an epic competition - 6 tasks in 7 days and some huge flights for everyone. The competition is over and the results are ready.

Winning today's task in a time of 3 hours 31 minutes 24 seconds is Russel Ogden (UK / Ozone)

First woman in todays task, with an overall distance of 50.470km, is Melanie Pfister (USA)

And today's winning team is Yasushi Kobayashi, Ulrich Prinz, Gin Seok Song and Melanie Pfister - Gin Team

Now that we have reached the end of the competition there are overall results to consider as well.

Winning event 6 of the 2010 Paragliding World Cup here in Chelan, USA is Josh Cohn (USA / Eagle Paragliding)

Top woman for the event is Joanna Di Grigoli (Venezuela / FordEicomCantvColumOakley)

And our winning team is Nicholas Greece, Nate Scales, Matt Dadam and Meredyth Malocsay - Porcher Sport

And finally, this competition is the final American event for 2010 which means we now have two new champions.

The Paragliding World Cup - American Open Champion 2010 is Josh Cohn (USA / Eagle Paragliding)

Paragliding World Cup - American Women's Champion is Joanna Di Grigoli (Venezuela / FordEicomCantvColumOakley)

The results are all available from the links above - prizegiving is at  21:00  and the podium photos will be along shortly afterwards.

Congratulations to all our competitors this week - its been BIG

Text by Chris

With just 10 minutes to go to the task deadline, we have just had news that we have 9 pilots in goal. Its proving to be a hard task but there are still pilots flying.

More news as we get it....

Text by Chris

The task is set - it is a 77.8km out and back race to goal to the north east of take-off.

The window is open and the start time is 13:30. Since today is the final day, the task deadline has been set at 18:00 to allow time for prizegiving etc this evening.

There are 14 SPOTs and 2 Live Tracking units in the field - the live map will have all the details (the 2 live units are now in yellow to distinguish them) - for more details on any of the pilots just click on the icon.

Here is the task map

The results came out very late last night so here is the summary.

Winning the task in a time of 4 hours 28 minutes 41 seconds - Jack Brown (USA / FLYAboveAll)

First woman with an overall distance of 63.99km - Ayse Bayrak (Turkey / MEDICAL PARK)

And the winning team for the day is Josh Cohn, Brad Gunnuscio, Matt Beechinor and Cherie Silvera - Niviuk

Text - Chris : Videos - Philippe

The results are available from the links at the top of the page - we will do the write up in the morning....

Text by Chris

The rather unique format of todays task has caused a few technical problems. Pilots were saying that their units would not accept the task (four waypoints in a row which are all the same - and the take-off is unusual). Plotting it on the various maps required a bit of cheating....

It also affects the scoring and, right now, Ulric is re-writing large parts of the scoring system to cope with this strange task - this is a job which will take some time so we will not produce results tonight.

We know our first pilot in goal was Jack Brown but we will have to wait for the rest of the results.

As soon as they are available, the results will be here.

Text by Chris

The task is running nicely. The interesting thing with this race is that the pilots can choose any direction they wish as long as they go outside the 50km cylinder before coming back so there is no 'course' to follow.

From the live map it seems that most are sticking together at the moment but it will be interesting to see how the choices are made as they go !

We are trialling 2 new live tracking units this week and, for the first time, they are on the Live Map - these are being carried by our competition leaders Joanna Di Grigoli and Josh Cohn - tomorrow they will appear in a different colour but, if we change it now, they will disappear !

Text by Chris

A task has been set - and its different !

The start is a 4km exit cylinder around the take-off and the pilots then have to get to a 50km cylinder - also around the take-off - so there is no actual turnpoint, just the edge of a 50km cylinder - then back to take-off and one turnpoint to the west before going to goal.

To complicate matters - they are not allowed to go north or west of the Columbia river or south of highway 2 - this leaves them an arc to use as a playing field.

Its quite hard to plot this on the map but we've done the best we can....the map is below.

Start is at 13:45 local time - watch the Live Retrieve Map for details