“I went in there hoping to get top five,” recalls 21-year-old Italian Andrea Cecchetto. He’s talking about this summer’s Paramotoring World Championships in France. It was looking good with two days remaining. “When I saw I was top two with two days left I said, ‘okay, I can really do something.’”
The next task was the snake, where pilots fly a cross-country task following a curved line (without GPS). It didn’t go to plan for Andrea. He performed badly, but his rival for the podium, former world champion Pasquale Biondo – who would eventually finish third – had an engine problem and scored zero.
Accuracy remained – bowling and spot. The tension was high. For the bowling task, pilots had to climb to 500ft AGL, cut their engines and glide down towards the landing where a series of ‘bowling pins’ were placed along a line – then knock down as many as...
