Paragliding World Championships 2021: Task 1

4 November, 2021

After the first day was cancelled, the Paragliding World Championships 2021 kicked off on 3 November with a 63km straight-line task in difficult conditions. No one made goal. Philipp Haag (DE) got furthest, wining the day with 39km flown.

Honorin Hamard and Luc Armant both made 38.3km, to take France to the top of the nations leaderboard after the first task.

Ruth Jessop is at the event in Loma Bola, Argentina, and sent this report:

Today started off with pilots sitting in swirling mist on take off unable to see from one side of the task briefing to the other. Optimistic as ever, a 63km task was set heading southwest. Mission impossible many of us thought.

The mist cleared just enough for 150 pilots to take off and head for a late start gate which opened at 15.30. Most managed to stay airborne and gain enough height in front of the Loma Bola ridge to take the start.

In the mountains at the beginning of the task, maximising every scrap of lift was critical, with only a couple of hundred metres between the terrain and top of lift to work with. The clouds were fairly benign, easy to escape from and the pilots didn’t risk being sucked in. The course line then moved out into the flats where it was much weaker with 1m/s climbs, then 0.5 m/s.

As the afternoon drew to a close, so did any chance of the pilots making goal. What little lift there was switched off leaving everyone to touch down in any of the plentiful landing options, in fields and lemon plantations. Nobody made goal but in the words of Daria Krasnova, “After all the rain over the past few days, today was a gift.”

Those who won the day were the pilots with a combination of good distance points and lead-out points. As nobody got to goal, there were no time points.