Registration is open for the Paragliding Grand Prix 2023, a new competition series for Standard and Sports Class paragliders, certified EN-C and below.
Three events have been announced for 2023:
10-15 June: Clopotiva, Romania
9-14 July: Levico Terme, Italy
3-8 September: Krushevo, North Macedonia
The series is aimed at “pilots who want to race, but in a relaxed way and not under demanding high aspect ratio paragliders”, and is the brainchild of Polish pilot Przemysław Czerwiński. He has been competing on EN B-wings for the last few years, and felt something was missing.
“Basically, I created something for myself, something that I felt was missing. There are a lot of pilots like myself, pilots who enjoy comp flying but don’t want to fly CCC-wings. Racing with an EN-B or C wing in conventional comps side by side with comp wings can be some kind of frustrating, having a considerable speed disadvantage. As a result, there are just a handful of lower category wings participating in most comps. And until now, there were only a few sports class only comps. We want to fill this gap of well-organised race series.”
As it happened, the PRP was announced in the same week as the Sports-class Racing Series – as they say, “great minds think alike”.
Nova are sponsoring the PRP, but they do not own the series, and it is open to pilots flying all brands. There will be “between three and five” events per year, with a maximum of 120 pilots per event. To encourage participation by women, 10% of places are reserved for female pilots. The competition tasks will be scored according to Time-Based Scoring system with the scoring categories Overall, Female and EN-B. All PGP comps will be FAI cat. 2 sanctioned and scored in WPRS (World Pilot Ranking System of the FAI). Additionally, there will be a Constructors’ ranking.
There are cash prizes up for grabs, with the overall winner of each round taking home €800, the first female pilot wins €400 and the top-placed EN-B pilot wins €300. Additionally, the overall winner of the season will win a brand new EN-C two-liner from Nova.
