Calm, clear Queenstown skies were full of thrills and
daredevilry on Saturday as paragliders from around New
Zealand and the world competed in Acrofest 2009.
The event which also incorporated the first New Zealand Acro
Paragliding Championships entertained about 2000 spectators,
who were also thrilled by the spectacles of base jumping,
wake boarding, skydivers swooping over their heads and
hang-gliding.
The national competition was won by Queenstown paraglider
Dean Houliston and Leno Oehl, of Germany, was declared the
overall Acrofest winner.
Organiser Craig Taylor said the competition had been fierce -
particularly after the favourite for the national title,
Queenstown's Dan Stevens, was forced to deploy a reserve
chute in his first competition round - which gave him zero
points and effectively put him out of contention.
The day was not lost for Stevens - in an expression round
following the competition he became the first New Zealand
paraglider in the country to perform what has been called the
holy grail of paragliding stunts, the infinite tumble.
Taylor said had there been more height, the tumble, which is
a flip over the top of the paragliding wing, would have
continued longer.
"He was looking like he could have kept it easy, making him
the only Kiwi in the country to have pulled one so far," he
said. A posthumous award was made for Queenstown-based
Argentinian hang-gliding pilot Gerardo Bean, who died in an
accident last Tuesday, for landing his hang-glider on a raft
during the qualifying rounds in Kingston.
"It was pretty amazing to be able to do that in a
hang-glider," Taylor said of the feat.
The winner of the hang-glider acrobatic award was Queenstown
pilot Niall Meuller.
The finale was an airborne tribute to Bean - considered one
of the best hang glider pilots in New Zealand - with about 60
paragliders and passengers filling the sky above Bob's Peak.
Taylor said Acrofest and the national championship had been a
resounding success - especially as it attracted such a large
crowd on a busy weekend. He predicted it would grow over the
next five years.
"There was the New Zealand Golf Open, the Arrowtown Festival,
the A and P Show in Wanaka," he said.
"This was Acrofest's first time in Queenstown . . . it is
only going to get bigger over the next five years [for] which
we have a resource consent."
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