Italy’s Alex Ploner won his second European Hang Gliding Championship title yesterday, taking gold at the 2018 Class 1 European Hang Gliding Championships in Macedonia.
Alex (ITA, Icaro 2000 Laminar) finished ahead of Grant Crossingham (UK, Moyes RX 3.5 Pro) who was second for silver, and Balazs Ujhelyi (Moyes RX 3.5 Pro) who took home the bronze medal.
Corinna Schwiegershausen (GER, Moyes RX 3) was first woman and 23rd overall. Only four women took part.
The Class 1 European Hang Gliding Championships in Macedonia were held from 10-20 July 2018.
In the teams, Alex helped Team Italy take gold – proving they are still the nation to beat in international hang gliding competition. Czech Republic took silver and Great Britain won bronze.
The competition saw eight good race-to-goal tasks, all more than 100km long, from 102.2km to 165.5km.
Posting on social media, Italy’s team manager Flavio Tebaldi congratulated Alex and his team: “After five world titles in a row, the Italian Hang Gliding Team wins the fourth European title in a row! Alex Ploner wins his second European Championship, after Kayseri 2012.”
The Class 5 (rigid) World Hang Gliding Championships were held at the same time in the same place, and also finished on Friday 20 July 2018.
In that competition, Wolfgang Kothgasser (AUT, Atos) took gold. Tim Grabowski (GER, Atos VQ) took silver and Robert Bernat (GER) took bronze. The comp saw a similar eight tasks.
In the Teams in Class 5 it was Austria, Germany, Japan for gold, silver and bronze.
The Class 1 European and Class 5 World Championships were held alongside each other to ease logistics and costs. 89 pilots competed in the Class 1, 33 in Class 5.
Find all the results at http://hgeu2018.mk/
