Update on Day 4 (evening)
First some bad news: Lino Coló has withdrawn from the race. This leaves us with 37 teams in the competition.
News from the teams:
Tomas Matera
Yesterday Tomas was detained by police after flying across the border. Local police officers stopped him after landing and made him wait for the Guardia Civil to arrive. They waved him on, but he lost half an hour to progress.
Simon Oberrauner
His day was really good yesterday, challenging, but Simon flew for 8 hours and did 170 km to pass two turn points. The plan for today was to reach the Pic du Midi and depending on time and weather to continue onwards to TP5. At the moment he is struggling a bit with the strong south-westerly wind, he would like to fly but it is always a question of assessing the risk correctly. Otherwise, our motivation is still high and we are fully convinced that we will reach the Mediterranean by Saturday at the latest.
Xevi Bonet
Xevi starts at 7am and finishes at 9pm. According to his team he’s a machine! He hiked up the opposite hill to Chrigel, Maxime, Simon and Noe. He flew but had to do a top landing and hike up a little more. He then flew to Pena Montanesa, Castejon de Sos, into the Val d’Aran and on and on. He flew for 7 hours and 140 km.
Today he began with some small flights before hooking up with Tim Alongi and Tanguy Renaud-Goud. Cloudbase was low, only about 1300m, so they made the most of the morning. Xevi is currently in 7th place, so the day obviously went well.
Thibault Voglet
Today he got himself into a position to get to TP 4, but during the fly Thibault broke a line on his glider – a central B line; so he had land to check if it’s only a line or also the internal structure. The team had to replace the line and then they headed for the French border for a possible evening fly …
Mikolaj Kocot
The first flight was smooth, but he first had to wait, and then come down a bit too avoid the cloud. There valley was covered with clouds and the thermals were too weak to touch the TP2 cylinder in the air. Then he launched at Accous towards the next TP, but after entering into the valley the wind was too strong. He almost made it for a third flight, but was a bit too late to take off and land before 9PM. Overall he made around 17km by air, in 1:15 h
As for tomorrow, they know the forecasts are showing strong winds, but are hoping to find a gap to fly as much as we can – as they did this morning.
Greg Hamerton
Greg says he’s not a runner, so he chose mountain paths to make progress. He hoped to get into a good position to fly, but hiked into cloud. He finally did tag TP2 this morning and is hoping to reach the border by this evening. Tomorrow the plan is to get to Jaca and take the aerial motorway to Ainsa, in the hope of staying away from thunderstorms. Once at TP 3 it will depend on the weather how he will negotiate Pena Montanesa and beyond.
Patrick Sieber
It was difficult yesterday, the others around us also had problems and all had to land and walk. But in the end it turned out to be a stroke of luck, because they were able to start the ascent to the Candanchu pass just in time. They then made a final push to get to the pass and Patrick was rewarded with a super evening glide of 30 minutes and 15 km! He landed at 8.45pm and he and his supporter were just able to jog to the car….
Patrick flew briefly this morning, but it was foehny conditions so safety was their most important concern.
Johannes Helleland
They made some tricky decisions in the first couple of days to hike and fly and they did all of the hiking but none of the flying. But today they had a good day! He had three flights today and made it past TP2 and to the border with Spain. They are in good spirits and still smiling.
Today: Chrigel Maurer, Maxime Pinot, Pierre Rémy and Simon Oberrauner made it past TP 5.
As the day ended Noe Court was 7 km from the TP and also between TPs 4 and 5 were Tanguy Renaud-Goud, Xevi Bonet, Jordi Vilalta,
Decent progress was made by pilots heading north from TP3 Pena Montanesa, helped along by a southerly tailwind
As the 9pm compulsory stop ticked by, Tomas Matera, James Elliot, David Corpas and Fabian Umbricht were all between 1.7 and 6km short. Also on this leg we have Andreas Viehbock, Cedar Wright – who looks to have had a good day, Thibault Voglet and Sergi Claret.
All pilots are now past TP2 and are heading down the southern side of the course, in small groups with Kinga Maszterlaz leading the charge.
Chrigel Maurer is staying high in a mountain refuge at 2800m tonight. His supporter Ramon Krebs carried up everything he needs, batteries, food, water, etc. His live tracker does not work there, but we can see him on his satellite tracking device.
Live tracking in the Pyrenees… this is not the Alps. The Pyrenees are wilder and less populated. There just isn’t the same GSM coverage here. All athletes must carry both our live trackers and a backup satellite tracker (Spot or inReach), so the organisation always knows they are safe. It may be frustrating for the folks at home not to have perfect live tracking and for that we apologise, but it’s the mobile signal in the mountains, not the X-Pyr website.
More action from 7am tomorrow.
