Day 2 of the 4th FAI Asian Paragliding Accuracy Championships was even more intense than the first one. The competition between Thailand and Korea for leadership was expectedly tough. Nevertheless, we witnessed even a more interesting battle: Saudi Arabia - a rookie to FAI Category 1 PGA comps - set a good pace from the beginning and now takes the 4th overall getting closer to Kazakhstan - the third strongest team flying at a home site. 7 and a half rounds were held till now. Tomorrow there will be a rest day.

FAI Steward Riikka Vilkuna tells us about the main events of the day.

Temperatures reached close to 35 C at the landing when flying continued throughout the day. The first pilot was in the air before 10 and rounds 5, 6, 7 and half of the round 8 were completed in steady pace until the wind picked up.

The FAI jury decided on a protest in the morning regarding one pilot’s result in round 4 and the protest was accepted. Two hard-working organisation members who deserve to be named were Marina Trippel and Aiganym Nurmukhambetova, they answered for the scoring and results publication.

The weather was very tricky with changing wind and the pilots approached the target from all directions. The challenging conditions resulted in just three 0 results during the 3 full rounds.  

Mongolia is one of the coming PGA nations and has a 4 member team participating. Team pilots Batdavaa Alzakhgui and Bayaraa Bolormaa were satisfied with the competition so far. Mongolia has just started organising category 2 events and the team will gain a lot of good experience here.

One of the new names in the fight for the top places is Iran’s Mohsen Mansouri (on photo). He is a professional paraglider pilot and between flying, he gathered information and ideas on how to push PGA forward in Iran. He is placed 4th after 7 rounds. The top three are Jirasak Witeetham from Thailand, Kim Ki Hyeon from South Korea, and Nawaf Al-Rehaili from Saudi Arabia.  

In juniors Jihun Yoo from South Korea is in the lead, he is 8th in overall. Among female pilots, the first place is held by Donghwa Yang from South Korea. With 110 cm she is 16th overall. 

Results: https://civlcomps.org/event/pga-asian-2022/results

Header photo: Iran’s Mohsen Mansouri making 0 on the 8th round

Mongolian Team

Nikita Melnikov KAZ

Jihun Yoo KOR