16 Apr 2022

Pan American Champions 2022 - Rafael Saladini, Galen Kirkpatrick and team Brazil

The 5th FAI Pan American Paragliding Championships ended after 6 successful tasks. The event was organized by Ederson Dutra Godó and Prefeitura Municipal de Governador Valadares with the support of Comissão de Aerodesporto Brasileira NAC of Brazil).
Throughout the championship, the weather was a bit tricky but the team couped with it in the best way, many pilots specially thanked the task committee for the creativity in setting long and safe tasks.

The first task was rather short 75 km due to the fact that the start window was delayed till 13.10 due to overcast in the morning. But after the sky had cleared it worked really fast - the task was finished in a bit more than 2 hours. The winner of the first task was Caio Henrique Buzzarello and Isabela Sales from Brazil.
The second day allowed to launch earlier but in nill wind conditions that trapped some of the taking-off pilots who were not used to it. 84 km was flown in 2 h 14 min by Rafael Saladini BRA who won that day and climbed the Competition Overall podium which he never left. Raffael was pretty sick that day but that did not prevent him from getting his 1000 points for a task that day. In females the winner was Galen Kirkpatrick from USA.
Task 3 was the shortest of all - only a 55 km race to goal. Again long waiting on TO for the proper launching conditions - the start was set only at 14.15. That day was won by Galen Kirckpartick from USA and in general US team performed well that day. That allowed them to climb the second in overall and has not left it till the end of the competition.
Task 4 and 5 were the longest in the comp 95 and 101 km respectively. The weather was exceptionally good but the trickly point of the game was flying through the blue thermals zone. And not everyone managed to hop on the conversion line. The winners of task 4 were Rafael Saladini and Marcella Uchoa from Brazil and in Task 5 Saladini lost 40 seconds and some leading points to Gilberto Raposo BRA, Marcella still being the first in female.
Task 6 was very fast - 79 km was flown in less than 2 hours. Some pilots had up to 60 km/h on the final glide. The winner of the day was Gilmar Couto from Brazil which did not prevent Saladini from winning overall and Galen being 4th in Overall has fixed her Champions title.

Congratulations to the winners!

Overall:
1   RAFAEL SALADINI   M   BRA
2   RAFAEL DE MORAES BARROS   M   BRA
3   ALEXANDRE GERMANI   M   BRA

All Overall results