How Safe Is Competition Paragliding, And Who Is Responsible?

Bill Belcourt's starting point is blunt: serious accidents have always happened, and racing simply makes them more likely, because pushing further than you normally would is what a race is. He prefers the comparison with downhill mountain biking to the usual Formula One one. Asked what would reduce fatalities, he puts training ahead of everything else, and he is direct that some pilots in the field are racing before they are ready to. Everyone is welcome to race, in his view, but they have to know what they can do and how to stay out of trouble. He rejects the idea that the community treats losses as survival of the fittest: the sports give a great deal, and for the same reason they can take a great deal away.

He is also wary of taking decisions away from pilots. He compares two events a week apart: one where the organisers made many of the calls for the field and saw a serious accident and several close calls, and a hike-and-fly race with weather briefings and no launch-condition rules, where pilots chose for themselves and the only incident was a reserve throw with no injury. He reads that as the power of pilots owning their choices. Nick Neynens, who flew at the top of the sport for fifteen years, adds the other half: doing everything right makes you safer, not safe, and believing accidents only happen to people who make mistakes is a comfort, not a fact.

Tilen Ceglar flew the World Championship at which a Belgian pilot was fatally injured. His account: the event moved to Castelo five months before it started, a site where Brazilian pilots had warned that the sea breeze would make it tricky, and it proved strong, particularly low down. On the day, with a strong northwest wind forecast over mountainous terrain where the landing options were plentiful but not flat, a new goal was set the evening before and only checked by the organisers the next morning. Stan Radzikowski, who has worked closely with organisers, says that is not how a championship normally runs: official landings are usually proven over two or three earlier events.

Both question what happens around an accident as much as before it. Radzikowski describes rescue and medical cover at some venues as of uncertain quality, and says French doctors have repeatedly filled the gap at major events. Ceglar says pilots were told they would receive a feedback survey and, a month later, had not. Radzikowski finds the way pilots are treated after serious accidents distasteful; Ceglar is careful to say that on most occasions activity stops while a helicopter is on its way, but that the minimum standard should put safety first every time.

Nick Neynens learned to fly in Queensland in 2007 and spent fifteen years flying remote mountains, much of it alone. His accident left him paraplegic, and he later concluded it was less his own fault than he had assumed: it was the rescue helicopter that blew him down the hill. Rotor downwash is heavy, and a pilot lying still with a wing attached can be dragged by it. He talks about what that has meant, about being told what he can no longer do, and about flying sailplanes now, which he calls the better way to fly and the less free one.

Getting the record right matters too. A claim repeated in an earlier episode, that a World Cup task was flown over a dead pilot, was disputed by Bill Hughes, who was competing: a pilot had crashed badly, a helicopter was inbound, the start was minutes away, and the organisers chose to let the field fly away from the area rather than land everyone where the helicopter needed to come in. The pilot's death was only known after everyone had landed, and the next day was taken off in his memory. And on insurance, Neynens' advice is to read what a policy covers: it may or may not include getting you to hospital, the treatment, and getting you home.