To compete

(photo : Malbos/CIVL)

You can play with the air, you can fly for pure pleasure. You can also fly to compete against the best – both pilots and gliders.

Hang gliding and paragliding competitions are held regularly, both as individual and team events, both as Category 1 or Category 2 events.

Category 1 events are FAI World and Continental Championships. World Championships are held biennially, with Continental Championships taking place in the intervening years.
Category 2 events are registered in the FAI Sporting Calendar as such, provided they are international Sporting events and follow specific rules.

History

Competition has been an essential part of our sport since the earliest days.
At first it was simply a matter of who could skim the furthest down the hill. Then the ‘duration and spot’ format evolved, with points awarded for time in the air and accuracy of landing. The first Hang gliding World Championship was held at Kössen in 1976, based on this format.
Spot landing remained a feature of many tasks until the early 1980s, by which time the emphasis had shifted to cross-country flying. Much was borrowed from sailplane competition formats and competitors recorded their progress by photographing turn-points with cameras en route to designated goals. The pilot with the shortest time was the winner. This format has since remained more or less the same.

However, it is not that simple. Success depends on finding thermals and using them efficiently, and it is easier to find them if there are a number of competitors ahead to mark them, so in an elapsed-time race pilots would hang back to take advantage of the early starters. Simply setting everybody off together was rarely a solution because few sites allow massed-starts and it also leads to dangerous ‘gaggles’ of gliders all fighting within a single thermal.
Gradually scoring formulae evolved which reward pilots for leading the way (‘early birds’). Many other features were added which attempt to eliminate luck as far as possible and also distinguish between a ‘good’ task day and a ‘poor’ one by reducing the points available according to how well the field did overall.

Today, hang gliding and paragliding soaring competitions follow more or less the same pattern, with a preference for ‘race to goal’ tasks.

Spirit

In 1975, the first hang gliding championship rules were voted by the first Plenary of CIVL delegates. The purpose of the championships was "to stimulate the development of hang gliding by an international comparison of performance of pilots and aircraft and to reinforce friendship amongst hang glider pilots of all nations… Three pilots can be entered in each class by any NAC... Each pilot shall have at least hang gliding Badge B…"

So…
- a championship was for all NACs and all pilots, not only the best NACs and pilots
- a championship was to find out which pilot and glider were the best
- a championship was for a limited number of pilots
- a championship was for qualified pilots.

In 1978, the CIVL Plenary decided that "each country could submit a team consisting of up to eight pilots". Team medals were then given away at the next – the 2nd – World championship in 1979 and at every subsequent championships, in hang gliding or paragliding.

The championships’ philosophy is still the same 30 years later: all NACs are welcomed, any gliders can fly (providing they are safe) and a limited number of qualified pilots are admitted for obvious safety reasons.

The last CIVL Plenary (in 2005 in Guatemala) has put extra emphasis on safety, requiring that each championship must not only be "fair" and "satisfying", but also - and firstly - "safe". Many decisions were taken in pursuit of this aim.

Scoring

In the early days, several different systems were developed and international competitors had difficulty in working out the best strategy to suit a particular scoring system. Eventually CIVL voted to support the GAP program which was devised by Gerolf Heinrichs, Angelo Crapanzano and Paul Mollison. GAP started in the mid-1990s and the basic model was adopted for all soaring Championships. The success of the system depends on the task-setter fixing parameters for the tasks he anticipates running throughout the competition. These will include the average length of the tasks, the average speed of the first to goal, and the number of pilots anticipated to reach goal each day. Also included are bonuses for the first in goal and the early-bird. GAP has undergone considerable development by its originators since it was introduced. Adjustments have been made to produce a version which suits paragliding.
GAP formulas have been included in the later developed RACE scoring programs.

GPS

At around the time GAP came into use GPSs entered the competition scene. The photographic evidence pilots had to produce was a perpetual source of problems and protests. Early experiments with GPS were encouraging. Today, GPS has become the standard.
A GPS is guaranteed to give an uncorrupted track log of the flight, timed to the second and impossible to falsify. It can be downloaded in seconds, and, using software such as RACE, the results of a hundred or so pilots can be scored with a few strokes of computer keys. Perfect? Well, almost. There are still technical problems aplenty. However, the experts are steadily solving these problems and there are few who would now exchange GPS for the ‘good old days’ of film cameras.

Paragliding Accuracy

Participation in paragliding accuracy competition has grown steadily and the first World Championships were held in England in 2000.
That event was based on the parascending competitions which had run in the UK and a few other northern European countries for the previous thirty years. The canopies were tow-launched and the emphasis was on the pilot’s foot hitting the centre of the large inflated target – measured to the centimetre – with no penalty for failing to remain standing.
That form of the sport owes much to the traditions of parachuting and the wings favoured by most of the competitors have very poor soaring capabilities. However, particularly in Slovenia and the Balkan countries, there was keen support for accuracy events launched from the mountains and using normal paragliders. To score in these events the pilot has to remain on his or her feet until the wing touches the ground – the ‘no fall’ rule – putting much more emphasis on landing control as well as accuracy.
CIVL has adopted the Slovenian format and many countries are participating.

Aerobatic

Paragliding and hang gliding aerobatic competitions have become a popular spectacle with fliers and the public. Many international events have taken place and CIVL is in the process of formulating general regulations for this exciting branch of the sport. The first true World Championships will be held at Villeneuve, near Montreux (Switzerland), in 2006.