Cross Country October 2021

Can you imagine being a thousand feet above an 8,000m mountain on a paraglider? It makes my heart beat faster just thinking about it. Knowing that if you get it wrong you will be swept over the back towards a jungle of peaks that stretch far into the Tibetan Plateau. Knowing the seriousness of the situation and being pilots we can perhaps understand why Antoine Girard said he “thought of nothing”, that it was “a perfect moment”, and that he was “just flying” when he reached 8,407m in the Karakoram in July. When things get serious in flying we tend to focus on “just flying” – not enjoying it, not shouting with joy, not taking in the view. We just fly. You might be a 10-hour pilot or a thousand-hour veteran…

François Ragolski is a professional ski guide, Acro World Champion (2016) and XC adventure pilot. His incredible shot of touching a wingtip at 5,500m in the Karakoram graces the cover this issue. Together with Antoine Girard he tells the story of their amazing adventure in the mountains of Pakistan – see p48 Andy Busslinger is a pro photographer who is a regular in these pages, having shot paragliding stories from Ethiopia to Nepal. This issue he stayed closer to home as official photographer at the PWC Superfinal. Along with Martin Scheel he shares his best images on p60 Phil Clark is a paramedic based in southeast London. Originally from Bristol he grew up in South Wales where he used to watch his dad hang gliding. He started paragliding himself in 1989. A…

France’s free-flight federation, the FFVL, has done a deal with Spot, the satellite tracking service, to provide all pilots on its official training programmes with a Spot 4 satellite tracker for free. They have also recommended that all French pilots fly with a Spot and have negotiated a discount for Spot services for FFVL members. “We have bulk-bought 75 Spot 4s for use by the young pilots at Font Romeu and the pilots in Pole France,” said Julien Garcia, sport technical advisor at the FFVL. “Like all of us, we were a bit worried about the potential of having a problem during an official training session, or a competition.” There is a sports school at Font Romeu in the Pyrenees for 16-18-year-old students. Students do standard studies, but also get to practise…

Serdar Tur and Hüseyin Tanrıverdi set a new national record in Turkey on 22 July, flying 375.65km across the country. The pair started from Ayas, west of Ankara, and flew south for nine hours, only landing near Mersin when it started to get dark. Both pilots were flying Enzo 3s. “We flew in almost every kind of weather,” Serdar said afterwards. “It wasn’t easy, it was exhausting but it was also my happiest.” Having flown all day at between 2,000-3,000m the last climb of the day turned epic. “We hit a 4m/s convergence in the valley as the sun was setting. We saw the moon rise, and we thought we were going to be in full darkness.” Both pilots ended the day with 16m/s spirals to wind off 1,000m before full dark.…

Olivier Berthelot from France was the lucky winner of the July 2021 Cross Country Prize Draw. He won a brand new paraglider of his choice from either Ozone, Gin or Advance, and after much consideration he went for a Gin Explorer 2. Other winners included Peter Wilkinson who won a top-of-the-range Naviter Oudie 5 Pro worth €800 and Paul Sciberras who won a sleek new pair of CimAlp Max Fly paragliding goggles. The draw is our way of saying a big Thank You to subscribers for supporting Cross Country throughout the year. Draws happen every January and July.…

The Paragliding World Championships will definitely go ahead in October/November as planned, according to organisers. They have confirmed ‘elite event’ status for the competition with the regional and national government, which means pilots and those involved in the teams will be allowed to travel to Argentina without the need to quarantine for two weeks. The World Championships in Argentina is happening after the original championships, which were due to be held in France in May, were cancelled because of the pandemic. Guessing that the world would have started to open up by October, the event team at the flying site of Loma Bola in Argentina made a bid to hold the Worlds – which was accepted. Organiser Matias Fortini told us more. Matias, you and your team in Argentina have been working hard.…