A nail-biting final saw two French pilots, Laurent and Alex Mateos, fighting hard for the first place of this slalom competition at the beach of Santos, near Sao Paulo. 17 of the world’s best PPG pilots took place in it and had a great time racing along three different courses at high speeds and only few metres above the ground.
The first edition of the “Fly Games World” achieved its goal of showing the sport to the big public. The wide beach of Santos was the perfect arena for the slalom tasks, and the spectators seated on benches in front of it could easily follow what it was going on at all times. According to the competitors, the rules were very simple and clear thus leaving no room for complaints, just flying and racing in a sportive way. Only the weather refuse to play ball, with strong winds and even some rain during the weekend, and it was then a question of luck to have more or less favorable conditions during each pilot’s round.
Seven tasks were flown on Saturday 3 and Sunday 4 of December, some solo and some exciting duels between two pilots covering the course at the same time. Overtaking was very tricky and the final between Laurent at the controls of a Paramania GTR (Vitorazzi Moster engine) and Alex with his Ozone Viper 2 (Polini 200 engine) was an epic race where anything could happen. Finally, Laurent found that the stability of his GTR helped him reach the goal ahead of Alex - despite the tight turns that the young French managed to nail.
Behind them, French champion Pascal Vallee (Dudek Hadron/Adventure) took the 3rd place, UK’s Dean Eldridge (Paramania GTR/Polini 200) was 4th and Italy’s Pasquale Biondo (Airwave Puma/Vitorazzi Moster) was 5th. They all received cash prizes.
Our Ojovolador pilot Daniel Crespo (Airfer-Moster/ RR Rolling 22) did very well ending on 6th place, despite being totally jet-lagged after a 24h delayed flight Spain-Chile (13h) and then a +12h trip to Brazil, and a prop broken on the first training flight… He even found time to record a few videos, take pictures and write this report!
A nail-biting final saw two French pilots, Laurent and Alex Mateos, fighting hard for the first place of this slalom competition at the beach of Santos, near Sao Paulo. 17 of the world’s best PPG pilots took place in it and had a great time racing along three different courses at high speeds and only few metres above the ground.
The first edition of the “Fly Games World” achieved its goal of showing the sport to the big public. The wide beach of Santos was the perfect arena for the slalom tasks, and the spectators seated on benches in front of it could easily follow what it was going on at all times. According to the competitors, the rules were very simple and clear thus leaving no room for complaints, just flying and racing in a sportive way. Only the weather refuse to play ball, with strong winds and even some rain during the weekend, and it was then a question of luck to have more or less favorable conditions during each pilot’s round.
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