The sky’s not the limit for Barberton Paragliding Open

Paragliders from all over fastened their harnesses and readied their wings for the seven-day-long Barberton Paragliding Open that took place from June 11 to 17.

The Lowveld Slope Soaring Club played host to the competition.

The 25th Paragliding Open took off from Lone Tree Hill and saw paragliders steering their gliders to a landing at Barberton Golf Club after they finished their task for the day.

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Willie de Klerk, one of the organisers of the competition, told Lowvelder that the open takes place over multiple days to give the competitors ample opportunity to gather points, as paragliding is weather-dependent.

“A task is set up daily by a committee of experienced pilots based on the weather outlook. It consists of a number of turning points that form a route. Pilots must try to complete the route, and the fastest to complete it gets maximum points, after which others earn points based on their time or distance completed,” De Klerk said.

Unfortunately for the participants, they could only manage to fly four days out of the planned seven days of competition, due to the weather circumstances being flyable, but not taskable.

A total of 45 paragliders registered for this year’s competition, with 36 confirmed to fly. Among them were paragliding enthusiasts from three countries, namely South Africa, Austria and Italy.

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The event got off to a flying start with the first task flown on June 11. The pilots geared up to take on a hefty 41.3km flight.

André Rainsford-Alberts, who competes for South Africa on the international stage, finished the task top of the class and started the competition on top of the leaderboard. Markus Swanepoel made his mark in the novice category, gathering the most points.

The following day was also taskable, and this time Lloyd Willemsen got the upper hand over his competitors. Jerry Lombard managed the same in the novice class.

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June 13, 14 and 15 were not suitable for competition flying due to the series of cold fronts causing very poor weather, and the pilots opted to explore Barberton on the ground.

The competition resumed on June 16 with a mere 27.6km flight. JF de Villiers of Cape Hope Paragliding claimed the points on the day with the Austrian Johannes Raher following in his footsteps in the novice class.

The final day of flying was on June 17, and Rainsford-Alberts won the task to claim an overall victory with a total tally of 2 078 points.
Lee-Anne Lombard managed to claim her first competition victory in the novice class on the end of day four, but it was Raher who walked away the overall class winner with 359 points scored.

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Khobi-Jane Bowden of Cloudbase Paragliding, who has been dominating the ladies’ scene for several years and who represented South Africa at events all over the world, finished top of the ladies, having totalled 1 294 points.

Astrid Christianson, marketing manager of Barberton Tourism, labelled the competition as a success. “This is a fantastic event. Where all other sports are on the field, this takes place in the air. Thus the whole community, including the children in the township, gets to see them fly. When and if a pilot finds him or herself needing to land in the township, the children go wild. They help and sing and are so happy to be part of it,” Christianson said.

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At the end of the day, the main vision of the Barberton Paragliding Open has always been to be a friendly event in which paragliders can improve their abilities by flying with others.

And this open managed just this.

One thing is sure: the paragliders thoroughly enjoyed themselves, both in the air as well as on solid ground.