Paragliding World Cup Spain, Yelmo, 2024 - daily report : Task 1
- Jun 24 2024
Epic Start to the Paragliding World Cup in Spain!
The competition in Spain began with high expectations for the first day. The day looked promising with a cloud base up to 4000m and a light northwesterly wind. A 145.7km optimized race to goal was set. The first leg led the athletes north, from where they had to turn around and then follow a zigzag course south. After the briefing, the start time was set for 14:30. Shortly after, Baptiste Lambert and Honorin Hamard were the first two to take off, followed quickly by the other pilots. By 14:00, almost all pilots were in the air and ready to start!
Fast forward to 6pm, when the first pilot arrived at goal after over 3.5 hours of flying. Task winner Honorin Hamard gave us some insight about the task: “The conditions were strong, but 30km before the goal we had some shadows which made it difficult to climb and we went quite low even though we initially thought we would be sucked into the cloud… but no. So the pilots from further behind saw that, took more height, and then placed themselves over the leading gaggle! Luckily we managed to find a good line in the end and come back via a nice cloud road!”
All in all, it was a very successful task with 84 people reaching the goal, and we can’t wait to see what the next days will bring!