Spanish pilots Paco Navarro Gonzalez and Marcelo Sanchez took the European ‘Straight Distance to a declared Goal’ paraglider record to 329.9km with a flight in Spain on 25 July. They beat the previous record of 274.7km, which was held by Jouni Makkonen in Finland.
With the same flight, the following Spanish national records were claimed:
- Spanish Open Distance (356km) record – Marcelo
- Spanish Distance around three turnpoints (371.06km) – Marcelo and David Polo Gutierrez
- Spanish Distance to a predefined goal (330km) – Marcelo, Paco and David
All three pilots were flying EN-D wings: Paco on a Mac Para Magus, Marcelo on a Niviuk Peak 5 and David on an Ozone Zeno.
Declared goal records differ from open-distance records because the pilot has to say where they are going to fly to before they launch and officially declare it.
And although there have been longer open-distance flights in Europe no pilot has declared a goal, reached it, and then (crucially) completed the paperwork to claim the official record. Jouni Makkonen holds the current European open distance paragliding record at 500.86km flown in June 2021.
See Marcelo’s flight on XContest.org
The Spanish paragliding records can be seen at parapentectnp.com/records
The FAI European record claim numbers are 19747 and 19748.
