Chrigel Maurer landing in Grindelwald
Advance team pilots managed a clean sweep at the Grindelwald Paragliding World Cup. Chrigel Maurer won and the Advance Team came first in the team rankings. Dorothea Stichelmair finished second in the women.
Chrigel said: “The World Cup in Grindelwald was strongly affected by bad weather – mostly wind or rain. Even so, thanks to super organisation, it was still possible to fly two tasks of 39 km on Sunday 25 May and 44 km on Friday 30 May.”
Chrigel was particularly happy because he’s done very little competition this year, but was able to win in Grindelwald, a couple of kilometres from his house.
Chrigel also made his mark on the event not just with this win, however. Just before the first task on the Sunday he also set a new infinity tumbling world record with an impressive acro feat of 198 continuous tumbles.
How much advantage did Chrigel have on his own turf?
“Even if I know every treetop in this valley, that’s difficult to say”, he said.
“Often it turns out that good local knowledge at a competition isn’t necessarily a great advantage, because you tend to stick to your familiar tactics too strongly and allow other competitors to blast off on their own routes unchallenged.”
As far as Advance pilots were concerned though that wasn’t the case. Andy Aebi, also an Advance company test pilot, pushed ahead thanks to his good World Cup overall interim results from the first round, Stefan Schmocker was fourth, Jeremie Lager, a young french pilot, eigth.
All results can be seen at www.paraglidingworldcup.org
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