SAFA Skysailor Magazine
8 SKY SAILOR September | October 2024 into a good position to fly far. It was a tricky decision: Launch early and risk suboptimal conditions, or gamble with the forecast thunderstorms? Some athletes, like Thomas Friedrich, Noe Court and Thibault Voglet, encountered cloudsuck and were penalised, other pilots reported difficult landings and wild conditions. Canadian Benoit Brunet-Poirier took evasive action and was blown into France, adding significant kilometres to his race to get back to the optimised course line. On the same day, the battle at the front of the race was heating up with Australian Shane Tighe and Austrian Simon Oberrauner (4th in the 2022 edition) flying and walking together. They both landed below the crest of Puigmal to walk down into the Vall de Nuria until they were clear of cloud and could relaunch to fly to the sign-in at TP 5. Then it began to rain… Pierre Remy was chasing them hard and made it to the TP the following morning, along with a number of others, including German Christian Schugg, French William Pierre and Swiss Lars Meerstet- ter. By this point, Simon had the lead and was heading for the flatlands that constitute the end of the race section before the final TP at Santa Helena de Rodes. Being chased by Shane Tighe and Pierre Remy, nobody had paid much attention to Christian Schugg, who took a completely different route and flew along the foothills of the mountain chain. When Simon was told of Christian’s progress, he started running – no mean feat in temperatures of 37ºC! Simon Oberrauner arrived in goal first, and after overtaking the others and with only Photos: Miaguel Ange, Salomé Baudoin , Jaroslav Jindra, Alicia, Rich Binstead Christian Schugg Maxime Pinot X-Pyr 2024
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