Competition News

By Jörg Ewald:

Good weather, finally! Sunny, very little wind at altitude, dry, it looked almost perfect. The only hair in the soup: the super-heated Surselva would pull in air from both North and South - some reports even talked about the onset of "shallow Föhn", which we had gotten to know already at the beginning of the competition.

Our objectives for the task were therefore: Go big, go to places we have not been yet this week, stay away from the areas most affected by the inflow from the South, and therefore land in Trun instead of Disentis.

The task led first to the West, towards Oberalp pass, then crossed the main valley towards Vals. Another long crossing led to the Flims and Laax ski arena, with two turnpoints (Cassons and Grap Masegn), back across the valley one more time to Bündner Rigi, and then goal in Trun, for 99.3 km.

The first few climbs were rough and fast, and pilots had no problem with getting to a good position for the race start. Some attempts to do the first valley crossing before the start and take the start cylinder on the South side had to be abandoned, in the end the whole field started together racing towards Oberalp pass. Conditions there were much more turbulent than expected: With no defined wind direction, every thermal going off would pull air towards it, making for a wild mix. Back to launch and crossing towards Garvera worked well, the pilots did not even have to go deeper towards Piz Muraun to make maximum altitude and continue onward.

Originally we had planned to fly to the mountains to the South-East of Vals, but ultimately decided to turn earlier towards Flims, to avoid the expected turbulence in that area (thanks for the hint Martin!). From there, most pilots followed the "logical" route along the eastern ridge, which worked really well by then. Only, Noah Kiener had a different idea, he headed straight North, along the western rim of the Vals valley, This worked even better, and he arrived at the Cassons Grat turnpoint with a lead of about 20 minutes.

But what looked like a decisive lead started shrinking again quickly when Noah struggled finding the one thermal that would give him enough altitude for the final crossing of the Rhine valley. The followers had almost caught up with him when he finally hit the right spot, climbed out and flew to victory, still with a 7-minute lead on the followers.

In total 44 pilots made goal in this long and demanding task. Their arrival times ranged from 2:45 h to 5:18 h. As one of them put it: "It was level 2 all the way around" - meaning "sporty, demanding, but OK to fly". Unfortunately, two pilots lost control of their gliders during the race and were unable to recover. The first incident required a complicated helicopter rescue out of steep terrain, the pilot was transferred to the hospital, and we all wish him a speedy and full recovery. The second pilot had enough altitude to deploy his reserve parachute, ended up on the ground unscathed, but in steep, rocky territory he could not leave on foot. With REGA having an incredibly busy day, he needed to wait for nearly 3 hours until they came to fly him out.

Day winners
Junior: Nic Jacomet (SUI)
Sports Class: Frédéric Monnet (SUI)
Women: Violeta Jimenez (USA)
Overall: Noah Kiener (SUI)

This was the conclusion of the 2026 Disentis Open. A new crew stepped into huge footprints, and ran a successful competition - with kind guidance by members of the previous organization team from the sidelines. Despite starting out with the worst weather forecasts for the week that we all could remember, we managed to fly three interesting and challenging tasks that showed once again what a fabulous spot Disentis is for paragliding racing. Some mistakes were made, and either fixed on the spot, or taken as a lesson, to improve on for the next edition. The final mistake being that for the prize giving, the author (Race Director and acting presenter) mixed up some names when calling pilots to the podium. This is why the pictures below do not completely correspond with the actual final rankings:

Junior
1. Nic Jacomet (SUI)
2. Thierry Stoll (SUI)
3. Nicola Heiniger (SUI)

Sports Class
1. Frédéric Monnet (SUI)
2. Gaëtan Gerber (SUI)
3. Loïc Theubet (SUI)

Women
1. Zaborowska Agnieszka (GBR)
2. Violeta Jimenez (USA)
3. Linda Hoch (SUI)

Overall
1. Lars Meerstetter (SUI)
2. Davide Licini (SUI)
3. Simon Steiner (SUI)

Photos by Martin Scheel.