Petr Benes Wins Hang Gliding Worlds 2025
It's the second time Petr has won the title – and the eighth time Team Italy has won the Nations competition
31 July, 2025, by Cross Country | Photos: Flavio TebaldiPetr Benes from the Czech Republic has been crowned Hang Gliding World Champion after winning the 24th FAI Hang Gliding World Championships in Spain, the second time he has won the world championship title.
Petr beat Italy’s Marco Laurenzi and Switzerland’s Peter Neuenschwander, who came second and third.
In the Nations competition Italy won gold for the eighth time in history, with Australia and Great Britain in silver and bronze position.
The competition was held in Ager, Spain from 13-26 July 2025 and saw six tasks scored, including race-to-goal tasks of 81.5km, 104.4km, 116.4km, 91.8km, 116.1km and 156.9km.
Petr Benes (Aeros Combat GT) was sitting in second place for most of the competition, while Marco (Icaro 2000 Laminar) sat in pole position from the second task.
However, by the final task Marco was only 21 points ahead, with a total of 3,792 points compared with Petr’s 3,771. That meant there was still everything to play for in the battle for the title – especially with such a long final task.
And indeed that is how it played out, with Petr, who also won the world championships in Brasilia in 2017, flying strongly to finally reach goal in equal fourth place alongside another former world champion Attila Bertok (HUN) in a time of 3hr35m15s, scoring a total of 928.2 points for the task.
Six minutes behind him Marco Laurenzi flew in to claim 10th place for the task – but only scored 881.2 points, a full 47 points less than Marco. That was enough to see Marco drop to silver position. In the end just 17.5 points separated gold from silver – a slim margin over a two week competition where the leaders accumulated more than 5,600 points each.
Credit: Darren Brown
The drama continued in the battle for bronze too, as Peter Neuenschwander (Aeros Combat C AC) also came from behind to upset Grant Crossingham’s (GBR) apple cart to take third place, pushing Grant into fourth.
With only four women competing there was no official women’s world championship scoring. However, Sasha Serebrennikova (AUT, Moyes Litespeed RX 3 Pro) was highest ranked woman, ahead of Chisato Nojiri (JPN, Aeros Combat GT) and Francoise Dieuzeide-Banet (FRA, Moyes Litespeed RX 3 Pro).
The competition was marred by several accidents and crashes on the cliffs. Although there were no fatalities several pilots needing helicopter evacuation and hospital treatment throughout the competition, including two incidents where pilots were seriously injured. The penultimate task was also cancelled after two rigids crashed on launch.
The competition saw 115 pilots from 26 nations competing in what was the 24th FAI Hang Gliding World Championships. Held every two years, the first world championships were held in Kössen, Austria in 1976.
CLASS 5
The competition was held concurrently with the Class 5 (rigid) Hang Gliding World Championships. This saw 32 pilots from 11 nations competing, also over six tasks of 91km, 109km, 116km, 96km, 105km and 163km.
Gold medal went to Naoki Itagaki (JPN, AIR Atos VQ), with Markus Baisch (GER, AIR Atos VRS) in silver and Guti Porath (ESP, AIR Atos VQ) in bronze.
In the Nations it was Austria, Germany, Spain in gold, silver, bronze.
