Jérémy Penone takes gold at Paramotor Slalom Worlds
 2025

The French pilot Jérémy Penone has won the FAI World Paramotor Slalom Championships in the main foot-launch (PF1) category, with Aleš Tryml (CZE) second and Eissa Al-Hajjaji (QAT) third. In the trike category PL1, the gold medal was won by Ibrahem Hussain (QAT), ahead of Boris Tysebaert (FRA) and Gaëtan Magnan (FRA).

This year also saw the first launch of the Serial categories in both foot-launch and trike classes. The foot-launch serial class was won by Cyril Planton (FRA), followed by Seweryn Sobczak (POL) and Ryan Głowka (USA). In the trike Serial class, Boris Tysebaert (FRA) took gold in front of his teammate Yann Leudière (FRA), with Abdulrahman Mohamed (QAT) in third.

In the nation classification, France topped the podium, followed by Qatar and Czechia. The competition saw 55 pilots from 10 nations compete, including three women. (They could not be ranked under FAI rules, which require at least four athletes from four different countries.)

Competition director Kamil Mańkowski said this year was special due to regulation changes designed to open the sport to more pilots flying standard equipment. The new rules prevent pilots from flying the most powerful engines on the smallest possible wings – previously the winning formula in the sport.

“The regulation for this championship was that the engine had to be less than 205cc,” he said. “We also had a special table for maximum wing loadings, different for Open and Serial classes. Basically, the pilot in Serial needed to have one size larger wing than in the Open class.”

He added: “We saw the sport was very exclusive for those who used highly optimised equipment, and we wanted to open it more toward normal pilots using standard setups.”

This was another important step for safety after the introduction of a photo-finish camera system shooting 20,000 frames per second. “The laser sensors we used before created a dangerous situation with two metal poles in the water that pilots had to fly between,” said Kamil. “We are still learning to fully optimise the new systems and classes, and we expect improvements based on experience gained in this event.”

The event was held in Bornos, marking the third time a championship has taken place in the Spanish town. Slalom is one of three paramotoring disciplines, the others being classic and endurance. It is a precision proximity discipline, requiring pilots to fly at speed around pylons and gates just above the water. High control skills are essential, and it is not unusual for pilots to end up in the lake after a collapse.

In other paramotoring comp news, Pasquale Biondo won the 2025 Accuracy Championship held over the Halloween weekend in Italy.

7wpsc.com