Men's and women's paragliding world records beat in 2 days

Indeed, on October 10, 2019; Marcelo Prieto, Rafael Saladini and Rafael de Moraes Barros set a new paragliding world distance record with an extraordinary flight of 588.27 km. They took off around 6:30 am from Tacima (North-East Brazil) and flew for more than 11 hours with an average speed of 53.5 km/hour. As usual, the Brazilians flew as a team until sunset (17h45) to achieve this mark.

They beat the previous record of a little more than 24km achieved 3 years earlier by Samuel Nascimento, Rafael Saladini and Donizete Lemos on October 13, 2016. Also at the departure of Tacima, they had made a flight of 564 km. Rafael Barros flew on an Icepeak Evox and Rafael Saladini and Marcelo Prieto flew Ozone Enzo 3.

Discover Marcelo Prieto's route that day.

Two days later, it was the Swiss Yael Margelisch who broke the women's world record on 12 October 2019 by becoming the first woman to exceed the mythical 500km mark with 552.82km (532km in a straight line) with her Ozone Enzo 3. Starting from Caico, not far from Tacima, her flight lasted 10h20 with an average speed of 53.78km/h.

Discover Yael Margelisch's route that day. 

Yael Margelisch had already broken the record for the longest female flight a few days before (October 4, 2019) with a flight of 443km but was taken back by Seiko Fukuoka on October 9 with a flight of 463km.

Every year, record hunters in paragliding travel to Brazil to take advantage of the exceptional conditions at this time of year. For the past few years, pilots have been performing winch (towing) departures that make the launch phase safer and easier for record setting.

Stay tuned, records are likely to fall quickly during the year as many pilots are looking to be the first to pass the mythical 600km paragliding bar!