How Do Paragliding Competitions Work?

Joerg Ewald flew the World Cup from 2004 until he retired from competition in 2025, and maintains FS, one of the programs that implements the GAP formula, named from the initials of the hang glider pilots who designed it. A task is either a race, where everyone waits in the start cylinder and leaves at a set time, or a time trial, where each pilot starts when they choose and their own time counts. Time trials earned a bad name decades ago because they were only set in poor conditions, but he likes them for the different tactics they demand. Either way, only the speed section is timed, from the start of speed section (SSS) to its end (ESS). You still have to fly on to goal for full points, but that last part is untimed.

Inside that frame there are three games. Distance is how far along the course you got. Time is how fast you flew the speed section. Leading rewards progress along the optimised route ahead of everyone else, which is meant to pay pilots who find the climbs rather than follow. In his simulations it only starts to matter at around a kilometre, or a thermal, in front; a lead gaggle flying together scores almost identically. Bad days are partly forgiven by a discard system that crosses out a pilot's worst results. And a turnpoint is missed by metres more often than you would think: the tolerance zone built into big cylinders was being used by pilots as a shortcut, so it has been tightened.

Ewald's map of the ladder is simple. Category one events are only the world and continental championships; everything else is category two. The popular category twos attract the strong pilots and are usually overbooked, so organisers take, say, the top 120 of the pilots who registered by world ranking, and if you are below the line your chances are small. That means a new pilot should pick events that are not over their head, where they can finish well enough to climb the ranking, rather than turning up at a big event to finish near the bottom and stay there.

Brett Janaway co-founded the Sports Racing Series around 2012, when a few organisers agreed over a beer to link their events into one series. He describes a deliberate balance: elitist enough to attract several top-100 pilots, open enough for anyone to try. The coming season has six events spread across the world, and two events are enough to maximise a season's score. After a survey of competition pilots, the series proposed flying ordinary EN wings with two limits: an aspect ratio cap of 6.7 to stop manufacturers recertifying high-aspect designs into the class, and a speed limiter to stop pilots making the wing faster than it is meant to go. He is candid that inclusivity has limits: a field needs a similar level to stay safe.

Shane Tighe went from engineering in the Australian flatlands to fifteen years of flying across the Himalayas and on to an X-Alps start line. He arrived relaxed, with friends as supporters, and only at the end wished he had checked out more of the route. He likes supporters who keep him company and feed him options, while making his own flying decisions. Erlend Ukvitne, who began flying in Trondheim in 2018, is candid that fitness was his strongest card but that these races are never won on the ground; he spent four summers in the Alps learning the air. In one prologue, slow conditions put him on the ground halfway and he had to hike back up and switch to patience. His 24-hour vertical record attempt, he points out, has no official rules at all, not even a requirement to carry a reserve.

Luke de Weert finished fifth in his first Acro World Tour season and set out to win it, which he did in 2023, a year after a crash in a storm. He trained core and forearms above all, and used visualisation to rehearse every step from leaving hospital to winning. On bodies and gear he is measured: very short arms are a disadvantage, heavy pilots make a wing more dynamic and break lines sooner, light pilots tend to downsize too far, but genetics do not decide titles. It is not Formula One, he says, where the best car wins.