Ramon Morillas & Daniel Crespo: World Champions!!

After hard deliberations last afternoon from the judges of the championship and the FAI, the classifications give the first place to Ramon Morillas (ES) in the foot-launched solo class, with Mathieu Rouanet (FR) second and Michel Carnet (UK) third. France is the winning PF1 team.
In trikes, Daniel Crespo could keep the leadership and takes the gold, with Nino Muelas and Antonio Lope winning in the tandem class (PL2). Spain is first by PL teams.
The judges had to make tough decisions to solve the protests presented, which were decisive to define the first positions of the championship. It was a nail-biting afternoon at the airfield, specially for the top pilots and teams. The French team demanded that Mathieu had kicked correctly one of the cloverleaf sticks that the judges had not given him, which reduced around 300 points from his results -little more than what separated him from the first position. Ramon protested for the same task that one of the marshals had waved a red flag to him while he was completing the circuit, which disturbed him and caused a significant reduction in his performance. The judges accepted both pilots’ protests, meaning that Mathieu took the first place momentarily but then the task was cancelled (and so was the difference gained by Mathieu) because it hadn’t offered equal conditions to all pilots. This decision was not happily received by some of the teams -besides the French. Team Poland had done very well in this task and even broke the world record of speed for the cloverleaf, so they were seen very upset with the news. “Scandal, scandal!” they shouted after reading the FAI juries’ notice on the board . Their position by teams was also affected by the cancellation. But it was not bad for all. The Canadians had been mistakenly training the cloverleaf slalom in the wrong direction and so they did it in the Championship… scoring very few points in that task. When it was cancelled they leaped ahead of Poland in the teams ranking! (We still have to confirm this information, as we do not have the official results yet). Ramon also demanded a turnpoint done correctly in the turnpoint hunt Navigation, where he supposedly had gone some 5 metres out of it. The Spanish team took the hassle to go and check the exact place of the turnpoint according to the GPS to prove that Ramon had gone correctly in the area, and the protest was accepted adding the corresponding points to his results. And so on, until solving a dozen protests that introduced changes in the ranking many times: each of the 3 top pilots was on the World Champion position at least once during the day. In PL1, the Polish also put a complaint against Daniel Crespo for touching the ground after completing the slow leg of the Fast-Slow, but they finally had to accept that the rules don’t penalize this once the time has been closed.

Late in the evening the official result was finally announced: Ramon was taking the gold. The Spanish team gathered at a karaoke bar next to the hotel to make a very positive balance of their performance in the championships: 3 individual gold medals (PF1, PL1, PL2), one Team gold medal (PL1) and Team bronze medal in PF1. The night went on in a festive mood after the arrival of some of the Canadians, Belgians, Germans and FAI juries to celebrate the conclusion of this 5th Paramotor World Championship.

The prize giving ceremony will be at 4pm.