A new Paragliding Brand is born: Raul Rodriguez Acro Wings

"The austrian paraglider company NOVA is proud to announce a cooperation deal with Raul Rodriguez, multiple world champion and one of the world’s most famous acro pilots. The agreement will be signed on Friday, the 19h of September, at the “Coupe Icare” flying festival. The collaboration includes the introduction of special acro paragliders under the new brand "Raul Rodriguez Acro Wings". They will be developed, produced and distributed by NOVA. Raul Rodriguez holds the trademark and is in charge of all flying tests and the image of the new brand.

With Acroaria in the lovely town of Omegna (Italy) the World Cup Series were over for this season.
All the pilots were training hard for this last competition, and most of the top ranked were there so we can say it was the strongest event of the summer. The weather was not ideal, so it was only possible to finish 2-2 runs in each category. Félix Rodriguez (SP) just a few weeks earlier became a father (congratulations!) so he did not go Paranoia, but returned here with and won in solo with great confidence! However, after the first run, Cyrille Planton (FRA) took the lead 3 points ahead (!), but in the second run several diagonals exploded in his wing during a Tumbling figure, and he could not finish the rest of the maneuvers so he fell back to the 17th place...Not a surprise, that Horacio Llorens (SP) finished second maintaining his great form! Till now Antoine Montant (FRA) was pretty busy working on his french ski instructor licence and then with some tandem flights, but finally he also arrived to Omegna just to make one competition for fun. He is a guy who doesn't need to train to perform at top level at any time. Now he prooved this again and came on the 3rd place. Wouldn't forget to say a word about the performance of the austrian Alexander Meschuh who made his careeer's best ever solo results during this season (here 4th) and Yoan Castegnoli who - I guess - pissed off all the other french guys with his 5th place!
Click for detailed solo results!

No big surprises in the synchro category, the results:
1. SATisfaction (Horacio Llorens, Hernan Pittoco) 159,14 pts
2. Joker (Gábor Kézi, Cyrille Planton) 154,97 pts
3. Against the Grain (Alexander Meschuh, Bernd Hornböck) 152, 10 pts
Click for detailed synchro results!

Solo:
2 ladies in the TOP 10! However Céline was one of the big surprises of the season, the japanese girl Seiko showed that with elegant style and many years of routine and experience it is hard to catch up, even for most of the mans!!!
Horacio Llorens won the most runs in the year (what means maximum score, 100 points for each run), all together 5 which obviously gave him the crown! His team partner Hernan Pittoco finished 2nd and Alexander Meschuh 3rd with no run victories, but a very stable performance during the whole season.

During 4 events 13 successful runs were held which means the points of the worst 4 run from each pilot are removed to calculate the final results (see the uncut points between the brakets). Of course no points are cutted from those pilots, who completed 9 or only less runs.

1. Horacio Llorens - Spain (1279,9) 894,6 pts
2. Hernan Pitocco - Argentina (1241,3) 875,9 pts
3. Alexander Meschuh - Austria (1201,9) 853,1 pts
4. Cyrill Planton - France (906,0) 850,1 pts
5. Cyrille Marck - France (861,9) 797,6 pts
6. Bernd Hornboeck - Austria (1026,9) 793,9 pts
7. Gabor Kezi - Hungary (870,6) 791,4 pts
8. Seiko Fukuoka - Japan (780,0) 722,3 pts
9. Celine Barmann - Switzerland (783,5) 710,6 pts
10. Renato Lopez - Brazil (708,4) 708,4 pts
...
63 pilots from 20 nations on the list.
Click for the complete solo results

Synchro:

On only 2 events 6 valid runs were held. Points of the 2 worst runs are removed from each team.

1. Satisfaction - Horacio Llorens, Hernan Pitocco (599,7) 400,0 pts
2. Joker - Cyril Planton, Gabor Kezi (577,8) 393,8 pts
3. Funky Spin - Baptiste Rousset, Alexandre Aimard (551,4) 377,8 pts
4. Against the Grain - Bernd Hornboeck, Alexander Meschuh (537,4) 372,2 pts
5. Les Blues de l'acopalypse - Guillaume Chatain, Emanuel Chanceaux (369,9) 369,9 pts
6. Picon Brothers - Cyrille Marck, Pascal Marck (531,5) 361,8 pts
7. Spalti Acro Team - Christian Maurer, Peter Neuenschwander (350,3) 350,3 pts
8. Against the Grain Jr - Sebastian Kahn, Ricky Kahn (514,0) 349,3 pts
9. Nendacroteam - Celine Barmann, Herve Cerutti (334,2) 334,2 pts
10. Titty Twisters - Andre Bernhard, Gregory Rondel (431,1) 324,2 pts
...
17 teams in the ranking
Click for the complete synchro results

Congratulations to all the pilots and teams!

The World Ranking is now updated with the result of the season's World Cup events (Vertigo Swiss Riviera, Paranoia). There is only one more APWC competition left this year, Acroaria in Italy, Omegna (14-17th August).


Top10 Pilots:

1. Hernán Pitocco (Argentina, 372,5 points)
2. Horacio Llorens (Spain, 366,4 points)
3. Félix Rodriguez (Spain, 364,6 points)
4. Cyril Planton (France, 359,6 points)
5. Pal Takats (Hungary, 355,5 points)
6. Antoine Montant M (France, 343,3 points)
7. Alexandre Aimard (France, 333,4 points)
8. Guillaume Chatain (France, 330,3 points)
9. Gábor Kézi (Hungary, 324,5 points)
10. Alexander Meschuh (Austria, 324,2 points)
...
See the complete Ranking

Top 5 Woman:

1. (18.) Seiko Fukuoka (Japan, 246,2 point)
2. (22.) Judith Zweifel (Switzerland, 237,1)
3. (30.) Céline Barman (Switzerland, 189,2)
4. (35.) Maeva Giacometti (France, 167,7)
5. (44.) Alexandra Grillmayer (Hungary, 128,6)

Top 5 Nations (best 4 pilots count)

1. France (31 pilots) 1366,6 points
359,6 - Cyril Planton
343,3 - Antoine Montant

Thanks to your activity - and my restitutive work :-) - the Video site is getting bigger and bigger! There are almost 150 videos already and the idea of creating a collection of interesting, impressive clips and quality movies, related to the extreme styles of paragliding seems working well!

The videos are grouped in the following categories. You can click on them to view all the videos of a certain category:

Paragliding acro - any kind of videos, related to acro
Competitions - all movies of acro comps
Events, Shows - demos, acro shows and any other paragliding related events
Acro Tricks - any clips, presenting a maneuver
Paramotor Acro - PPG stunts
Wagga Flying - playing with the ground
Speedflying - riding, flying with small wings
Incidents - accidents, reserve openings, etc...
B.A.S.E, Freefall - videos containing parachuting
justACRO - all movies, clips made by the justACRO Team

All the videos are also marked with Tags (keywords) which helps to find movies easier.

Please feel free to Submit your favourite videos (don't forget to log-in first)!

Have fun browsing the collection!

Despite the not ideal weather conditions the 4th Paranoia in Zell am See, Austria was a really succesfull event. 4 valid runs out of 4 days with 36 pilots + a freestlye expression session on the sunny saturday afternoon with the best 15 pilots mixed with some base jump demos, out of the helicopter at 1000m over the lake.

Due to the low height difference of the take-off places here the pilots have to perform 3 maneuvers (which means only the first one can be Tumbling or Infinity) and they were allowed to choose their free program right from the first run.

The audience could see some hot situations and reserve deployments for example on Friday, when Dennis Sørensen falled straight into his canopy from the exit of an extremely dynamic Tumbling at 300 meters...

Horacio continues to perform his best in this season and finished first many points ahead his followers. Thanks to not only his precisely executed maneuvers, but also the great ground spiral landings whereafter 3 out of 4 times he landed dry on the small raft, however the conditions were not optimal - almost zero wind all the time !
Seiko Fukuoka showed to the boys how to make nice helicopter combinations and finished 10th overall and 1st between the womans.

1. Horacio Llorens (SP, SOL Supersonic, 357,38 pts)
2. Hernan Pittoco (AR, SOL Supersonic, 339,98 pts)
3. Cyril Planton (FR, Team5 Black, 334,98 pts)
4. Alexander Meschuh (AT, Icaro Nikita, 325,05 pts)
5. Renato Lopez (BR, SOL Supersonic, 315,73 pts)
6. Hornböck Bernd (AT, U-Turn Morpheus, 312,95 pts)
7. Kezi Gabor (HUN, U-Turn Morpheus, 307,90 pts)
8. Schrittwieser Marcell (AT, SOL Supersonic, 301,96 pts)
9. Marck Pascal (FR, Ozone FLX, 300,08 pts)
10. Seiko Fukuoka (JP, U-Turn G-Force, 291,08 pts)
...
Detailed results here

For more information and upcoming photos, videos visit: www.acro.cc

Actual FAI World Ranking (results after Vertigo Swiss Riviera)

Last but not least ,after a 2 month long break I made my first flight out of the helicopter on saturday and did a nice synchro session together with Gábor! It was awesome to be in the air again and see that the maneuvers are still working :-)

Since there are no words about the competition on the official website, I could only ask a friend from Ölüdeniz to tell me at least the top 3 results, here they are:

1. Hernan Pittoco (AR)
2. Horacio Llorens (SP)
3. Alexander Meschuh (AT)
4. Michael Knipping (DE)
5. Gillaume Cornet (FR)

Detailed results here!