Paragliding World Cup

The full video of last night's prizegiving is now available - enjoy....

The Talloires Paragliding World Cup event is over and the prizegiving was a nice event. Plenty of people turned up to watch as the winners of the various categories were presented with their trophies and winnings.

The trpohies this week have been specially hand crafted for the occasion by a local artist and are made of glass inlaid with Bronze, Platinum or Gold depending on the position of the recipient (see the picture at the bottom of the page).

There is a music festival this evening here in Talloires and so there is a band setting up in the square where we held the ceremony - it will probably turn into a party....

So, here are the podium positions

Ladies first - from left to right we have Keiko Hiraki (Japan / API - Sky Asagiri) in 2nd. Current FAI World Champion Elisa Houdry (France / ABAC) in 1st place and, in her first ever XC competition [Seiko has just 'crossed over' from Acro Competitions], - 3rd place goes to Seiko Fukuoka Naville (France !!/ Les Passagers du Vent) - she's actually from Talloires....though the costume doesn't give you too many clues...

Now for the Open Podium. From left to right - Aljaz Valic (Slovenia / Mastercard - aforma - kovk ) in 2nd, Stefan Wyss (Switzerland / SPÄLTI - skywings.ch) in 1st place and Peter Frauenschuh (Austria) in 3rd.

These are the winning teams - on the left you have Team Abac/Niviuk [Elisa Houdry, Maxime Bellemin, Jean Marc Caron & Erwan Didriche] in 2nd. Centre is Team Gin [Anja Kroll - the current PWCA Womens World Champion, Aljaz Valic, Christian Tamegger and Ulrich Prinz] and on the right, in 3rd place,  is team Spälti [Regula Strasser, Thomas Koster, Michael Sigel and Stefan Wyss]

The winning nation for Event 4 of the Paragliding World Cup 2009 is Switzerland - there are 12 Swiss in this week's competition (4 are missing from this photo).

As mentioned above, the trophies were specially made for this Paragliding World Cup event and are inlaid with Bronze, Platinum or Gold according to the recipient's position in the event - actually, shortly after this photo was taken, Xavier was spotted trying to 'slip' it into his pocket...!

The video reports from Philippe Broers and the Talloires Office du Tourism have been a popular addition to the website this week and we haven't quite finished with them yet. Here are the last episodes from Talloires, France. The next event is Buzet in Croatia and starts in just 21 days time - see you there.....

The sky began to clear quite nicely but, after three hours on take-off assessing the conditions, the decision has been taken, on safety grounds, to cancel the final day.

There is a strong wind and considerable turbulence so everyone is coming back down.

That means that the overall results from yesterday are now the Final Results for the Talloires Paragliding World Cup event.

Overall Open Champion - Stefan Wyss (Switzerland) - Spälti / Skywings.ch         - 1896 points

Overall Women's Champion - Elisa Houdry (France)   - ABAC                                  - 1595 points

Winning Team - Gin

and Winning Nation is Switzerland.

The prize giving ceremony starts at 18:00 in Talloires and we will post the podium photos etc. as soon as we can.

The last day is here and its looking good. There is some low cloud on the surrounding hills but we expect this to lift. The busses are leaving for take off at 11:00 and we will wait for news of a task.

There was a party here in Talloires last night - we had a big marquee on the beach with a band and a dance floor, free food and drinks and a prize-giving for Task 4 (the local communities have supplied some prizes for this task).

The main prize ceremony is this evening in Talloires but, meanwhile, we have a task to set - check back here in a while for details.....

Philippe has been busy editing the latest video and it is ready for viewing !

It is raining this morning and the clouds are low, covering the take off.

The day has been cancelled but there is still a chance of some free flying. The forecast says we should get a period of about 2 hours of flying weather from 14:00 to about 16:00 so a shuttle bus will be leaving at 14:00 to take pilots to take off (or to the forest adventure park if the weather is still too bad to fly).

We ended up with a grand total (confirmed by instruments) of 97 pilots in goal today. Reports are that the conditions were very strong and the course was challenging.

The race was won in a time of 1 hour 44 minutes 08 seconds by Stefan Wyss (Switzerland / Spaelti - skywings.ch)

Winning the womens title today is a newcomer to the Paragliding World Cup - Seiko Fukuoka Naville (France / Les Passagers Du Vent) completed the course in 2 hours 3 min 21 seconds.

The last pilots have reported back and the race is over. At this time we are showing a total of 96 pilots in goal - this is provisional until their instruments have been downloaded but its a nice figure.

We are now waiting for the busses to come back from the goal field.

As soon as the downloads are complete we will publish the results of todays task - it should not be too long now...

Text by Chris

We have received information that a few pilots have landed at the landing field in Perroix but thet the majority of the pack are on course towards the goal.

At the time of writing, we can also see a number of competitiors around turnpoint 3 now heading for turnpoint 4.

Text by Chris

Todays task is set. Its a 54.2 km race to goal towards Annecy and then north east to a new goal field in Thuet (new waypoint A07 - 32T 0302167 5104125).

The window opened at 14:00 and the start is at 15:00. Task deadline is 18:00

The task map is below. Also, Philippe Broers has now uploaded the final part of his report for yesterdays task - here it is....