Antoine Girard, the legendary French pilot, together with Veso Ovcharov, takes on the extreme aerology of the Karakoram, completing a historic flight of more than 11 hours at the foot of 7,000-metre giants, overcoming storms and agonising thermals.
The Karakoram crowns an unprecedented milestone in distance flying
The world of distance paragliding and vol-biv has just witnessed one of the greatest feats in its history. The tireless French pilot and adventurer Antoine Girard has closed the first 400-kilometre FAI triangle in history, setting a new absolute world record in his favourite “playground”: the imposing, wild mountain ranges of Pakistan.
The flight, made in mid-June, dethrones the previous FAI triangle record held by Edouard Potel with 358 km in the French Alps. However, the scale of Girard’s achievement lies not only in the distance but in the setting: tracing a perfect triangle over gigantic glaciers and peaks of more than 7,000 metres is tactical and physical Russian roulette.
Team strategy: Antoine Girard and Veso Ovcharov, and the storm challenge.
For this assault on the history books, Antoine Girard was not alone in the early stages. He teamed up with Bulgarian acro and distance pilot Veso Ovcharov. Flying as a team, the two coordinated glide lines and climbs to devour kilometres at a frantic pace.
Antoine took off near Karimabad, in northern Pakistan. Flying an ultralight Ozone Zeolite 2 two-liner paired with a modified F*Race 2 harness (a prototype adapted for extreme vol-biv), the tactic was working perfectly until the relentless high-mountain weather showed its claws.
An hour in the rain and agonising thermals
A heavy curtain of rain and storms halted his progress, forcing the pilots to make critical decisions. With rain at these altitudes able to soak the wing and trigger a potentially fatal parachutal stall, Girard chose patience.
He decided to wait for it to pass and then go around the rain area. Although that decision cost him almost an hour, leaving him scratching in very weak, disorganised thermals after the storm had passed, patience finally paid off, Antoine explained, visibly moved, after landing.
The French pilot had to float in the shade, managing washed-out air completely destabilised by the storm’s cold front. Climbing back out of the deep valleys in those conditions, with ceilings close to 6,700 metres, is a testament to his technical mastery.
The numbers of a legendary flight
Thanks to the telemetry shared on his official platform, the flight data are simply overwhelming:
- Total distance: 400+ km in a perfect FAI triangle.
- Time in the air: 11 hours and 32 minutes of uninterrupted flight.
- Maximum altitude: more than 6,700 metres above sea level (almost 22,000 feet), flying in sub-zero temperatures with oxygen on board.
- Route: take-off at Karimabad, a deep transition towards the far west of Pakistan, a turn to the south-east towards the provincial capital Gilgit, and a final leg back to the north-east across extremely difficult glacial terrain.
Fun facts that make this record even more epic
- The curse of the triangle: flying 400 km in a straight line with a tailwind (as on the plains of Brazil or Texas) is impressive, but an FAI triangle forces the pilot to fly in three different directions. This means Antoine inevitably had to deal with strong headwinds and crossing valley breezes in areas with no safe landing options.
- King of the Karakoram: Antoine Girard is no stranger to Pakistan. In 2016 he became the first person to fly a paraglider over the summit of an 8,000-metre peak, reaching 8,157 metres above Broad Peak (8,051 m), and in July 2021 he raised his own record to 8,407 metres above Broad Peak.
- The gear: the wing he used, the Ozone Zeolite 2, is one of the most advanced Hike & Fly tools on the market, originally designed for brutal races such as the Red Bull X-Alps, where the balance between extreme lightness and performance in turbulence is vital.
The official track has already been submitted and is awaiting ratification by the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI) to be formally recorded as the new world record.
From the Ojovolador.com newsroom we send our huge congratulations to Antoine Girard, Veso Ovcharov and the whole Ozone team for pushing, once again, the limits of what we thought possible on a paraglider.
🔗 Useful links for the community:
- Analyse every turn, altitude and speed on Antoine Girard’s official Syride track.
- https://www.antoinegirard.fr/en
- https://www.facebook.com/antoinegirardfly
