justACRO.com

Stands on Niviuk's website:

"Raul Rodriguez, a new destination

We announce, by mutual agreement, the end of the engagement of Raul Rodriguez towards Niviuk Gliders. The complete Niviuk staff thanks Raul for these 3 years of collaboration with many big sensations and pictures."

Info: Niviuk.com

Chrigel Maurer - despite his young age - is without doubt one of the best XC pilots since many years, winning the world cup series one after the other...But not everybody knows that behind the scenes he is also a rising acro star! Flying acro in his free time, just for his own entertaining step by step he learned all the figures and arrived to a world class level. On 19th of March he took-off at Jungfraujoch in Switzerland, soar up the three famous mountains of the Alps - Jungfrau, Mönch, Eiger - then flew over the valley of Grindenwald and made 158 Infinity turns with his Advance prototype (current official record 120 turns by Antoine Montant by jumping from helicopter).
We catched him for a short interview just after he became father, his son was born this Monday!

Name: Chrigel Maurer

Age: 25 years old

Place of home: Wilderswil, Interlaken

Started to fly paraglider in 1998

Started to fly XC competitions in 1999

Overall PWC winner in 2005, 2006 and 2007

European XC record holder, 323 km (in 2004)

Website: chrigelmaurer.ch

justACRO: You are a real competitor character and for several years you were participating in all the cross county World Cups, this is actually your main profession?

Chrigel Maurer: Yes, my first PWC was in 2001 - when I was 19- and I won the series overall in the last 3 years.

jA: Beside focusing so much on XC how is your relation with acro flying?

Chrigel: I love the fascination of the maneuvers...

I can't find the words...such a great loss...The always-smiling Mathias Roten, world class paraglider pilot left this world on Friday by a speedflying accident. He went out riding alone to Lötschental, not so far from his hometown (Thun) in Switzerland. He flew a small sky-diving parachute with not so good take-off ability - as he said earlier. Nobody knows exactly what happened, because as far as we know there are no witnesses of the accident. He attempted to take-off close to the peak of Hockenhorn at 3000 meter from the top of a cliff, but probably his glider did not inflate properly and he fell down 100 meter from the rock and died immediately...Soon after a rescue helicopter came for him, but they couldn't help anymore.

He was not only one of the best paragliding acro pilots with his unique, agressive style (1st in synchro overall world cup in 2005 with Dominique Steffen), but a very expert cross country pilot as well (1st team in overall world cup in 2004 and 2005 ). Despite these great successes he never took the stress of the competitions, only flew for fun and the results were not really important for him. In 2007 he also mastered Infinity Tumbling and expressed himself in speedflying (he also run the biggest speed-flying site on the web)
He had incredible talent and enthusiastic passion to everything he touched: he was kitesurf and ski instructor, test-pilot, sky-diver, speedrider and probably the best drum player I've ever heared. He stopped paragliding competitions 2 years ago and his attention turned to film-making. At the end of 2007 with some of his friends they released the Play Gravity movie, a masterpiece of extreme sport cinematography created by the ideas of Mathias.

He was truly the artist of life...a great person and friend...

We will miss you so much!!! :-(

Because...” is a new competition based on a simple question: why do you fly?

We know that every single person has a good answer for this and well we are waiting for your ideas at: www.flyozone.com/because

Check the trailer and when it ends you will be redirect to the contest page. We have many prices to give away!

Thanks for sharing your answer with us.

Created by Jorge Atramiz and Herminio Cordido with The Ozone team.

Pál Takáts (picture right side), the most successful acro pilot this season (1.place Acro World Cup 2007 - solo) and at present placed second in the FAI-Acro worldranking, and Gábor Kézi, ranked 18th in the FAI list, joined the U-Turn acro team. Both pilots employed up to now a glider that was developed by U-Turn Designer Ernst Strobl, but built by another manufacturer. Now the Hungarian pilots want to get the best of the continuosly enhanced original G-FORCE 360.

Marcelo Borzino, a respected and experienced brazilian acro pilot, also known in the competition scene has died a few days ago while attempting to do Infinity Tumbling. He fell into the wing at about 300 meter above the water. He had no chance to open the rescue parachute, hit the water in free fall and died instantly...

Rest in peace Marcelo!

Please take care...

Auf Deutsch

What you need to do?
Just register yourself and share your best picture(s) from this season in justACRO’s galleries, till 30th of October!

Raúl Rodríguez, the most well known and respected ACRO world champion pilot ever, has announced that he is to quit competition flying. Raul has perhaps been the most influential pilot within the sport of paragliding and his contribution to the discipline of acro has been inmeasurable. Raúl, invented most of the extreme acro manouvres used today, such as the “Sat” or the incredible “Infinity Tumbling.” - He is still the current Guiness world record holder for the most consecutive “Infinity Tumbles” completing a perfect 108 tumbles in June 2006.

On 25th of April Mike Küng performed the first indoor head over jump with paraglider in the Tropical Islands Hall (Berlin, Germany). He jumped from 94 meters above the ground and flew 40 seconds after a perfect opening. Related photo gallery: Mike Küng - indoor jump

According to reliable sources we can be sure that some of the big names in the acro scene change company for 2007.

Most of you know that Pal and Gabor moved to APCO Aviation right after last year’s competition season. Now their G-forces are having a rest.

Not only they will be flying with new brands but also Felix Rodriguez, who was the star pilot of U-turn, now left the Team and prepares for a great year with his new Ozone glider.