The Paragliding World Cup in Bright, Australia has begun. It promises to be a real battle of the titans with the Australian pilots having had lots of competition practice in the recent Bright and Corryong Opens. The Rest of the World have just had time to repack their wings and come here straight from the grueling 10-day Super Final. The town of Bright and its famous Mystic launch is situated in the heart of the Australian Alpine Region and should suit a lot of the northern hemisphere pilots. The first World Cup took place here way back in 1998 and since then it has been the take-off for National comps every year. In general, the whole hill is a trigger point giving monster lift straight away and making a fantastic starting point for any number of interesting race courses. Narrow valleys make the transitions easy and particularly suited to big triangles giving lots of options for task setting. The conditions should be strong but very manageable, with cloudbase relatively high, usually above 2,500m. The PWC reports from the first day of competition: Today we went to Gundowring launch 1.5 hours northeast of Bright. Getting everyone off was difficult as the wind switched round unexpectedly for long periods of time. Today’s task was an 88 km zig-zag course up and down the valley with two turn points. This comp has got a star-studded cast from all around the globe so today was an interesting combination of local knowledge versus international experience racing around the valley. Honorin Hamard and Jurij Vidic pulled away from the rest half way round the course. They continued to leapfrog each other with Honorin finally winning by 1min 30 seconds. After a difficult start to the day, we had 94 happy pilots in goal. For full results visit PWCA.org Don’t forget to tune in on the PWCA App now available for Androids and IOS devices to follow the live Commentary and tracking. Stay tuned for more.