Pre-Worlds 2018

After 430 km and 25 hours in the air we have our old new paragliding champion of Macedonia, Vladimir Nedelkovski, with Borjan Jovanoski and Me coming up as second and third.

IMG-d5112f7a687c65c4e9a652fc3a4bf70d-V

For me the Krushevo competition season started one week earlier at the Krusevo Adventure event. There I had a chance to make the switch from tandems and relax in the rainy Krushevo with the team at Medusa temple.

The next week, from 5th of August showed promising weather for all the comp days on the Pre-Worlds and Macedonian – Hungarian nationals. We started off with a relaxing training day together with the MKD team, we made sure we are ready for what’s coming, feeling fresh after the short local flight. During the registration we could see that this was not going to be easy, there were a lot of high end gliders while we were on our en-d (three liners) and en-c,b gliders, only Vlade flying his retro Boomerang 9.

IMG-cb675df38f6ebabdde9a7b529c0e516e-V

First day started off great! The flying conditions were classic for Krusevo and for us it was one of the best flights there, in the national category the task was won by Mile on his queen 2, flying very fast and in the lead, this was the official confirmation for a very competitive nationals.

I had a bad start of the comp, first I was looking for a strong climb where there were weak ones and had to make a low safe which took me some time, finishing the day in 7th in the nationals.

Day two was also difficult for me, with Dare we started well from the start gate chasing the Enzos and Boomerangs which didn’t went as planned, we had to slow down and climb because their glide is just crazy compared to ours, after that Dare managed well and continued on the course quite fast while I got stuck again and when I finally got to cloud base I immediately continued in a solo pursuit which ended inglorious with a bomb-out.

After this I had to change my game a bit, the attack was only when a good chance would present itself instead of attacking all the time, I used the gaggles much better and managed to be in goal all the time until the end of the event, that made 4 consecutive tasks in goal which is also first for me 😅.

This comp was the most fun so far for me, arriving in goal with my friends everyday together with seconds splitting us apart. It takes some time to learn the game but when we do it’s very rewarding. At the end Vlade won the national category, Borjan was second in the national category and first in Sport class and I made it on the third step of the podium.