The Paragliding World Cup has launched in Spain head to tail with the Test event of the European Paragliding Championships. The World Cup reports they are delighted to be making their first visit to Pegalajar. The event launched on Saturday May 6, 2023 with a safety briefing and a parade. After the participants were greeted by the community officials.

On Sunday there was an excellent first task, 86 km and 102 pilots in goal! Just to compare 121 pilots from 27 nations competed in total. 

Ruth Jessop reports from the place:

"Pegalajar, in southern Spain, is an excellent starting point for long cross-country flights, with distances up to 200km being flown regularly. It is also becoming increasingly well-known as a competition site, having already held successful Spanish Championships, Pre-World Cups, National and Regional Leagues.

Take-off is 2km from the town of Pegalajar, with the possibility of flying here in a variety of wind directions (W, NW, N and NE).

The take-off is only 80 meters higher than the bomb outfield, but climbing out is usually very straightforward. The flying here affords a nice combination of flats and mountains with cloud base usually above 3000m. The thermals are well-defined, and it is possible to fly almost every day from March to November.

A wide variety of tasks should be possible: Different triangles combining mountain sections with flat terrain sections, pure flat terrain, along the fast exit ridge and back, square tasks taking in the edge of the valley, crossing the valley… Here, the sky is our playground.

However, landing can be tricky sometimes, Andalusia is totally covered in olive trees, but as long as you like olives, this shouldn’t cause any problems.

The town of Pegalajar is very homely and the people are super friendly. The region is well known for its terraces and tapas.

Fifty-six pilots taking part in the competition have the highest possible qualification letter, an A. Can the unstoppable Baptiste Lambert make this his fourth World Cup win? It promises to be an extremely high calibre, exciting World Cup to follow. Pilots are coming from as far and wide as: Australia, New Zealand, Chile, Japan and the Philippines.

After successful trials of live scoring at the recent World Cup in Brazil, we are delighted to announce that this has now been adopted as standard, along with our new Maillot Jaune feature".

Event dates May 06-13, 2023

Just a reminder that all the results are available here: https://live.pwca.org/scores

Tune into the website https://pwca.org and the live app https://live.pwca.org.

Flymaster live tracking: https://lt.flymaster.net/bs.php?grp=5033

Photo Gallery: https://photos.app.goo.gl/m1NqBDq3uRr6E8hk8

Photo gallery of the pilots taking part: https://live.pwca.org/photos.php

Instagram: officialparaglidingworldcup