Torsten Siegel pulled off a comeback on the final day of the Canadian Paragliding Nationals in Pemberton.
On July 27, in the fourth and final task of the weeklong competition, Siegel won the day with a score of 915 to edge American pilot Mitchell Riley in the open category. Siegel's three qualifying scores totalled 2,253 to Riley's 2,232.
"In the middle of the race, I was able to lead and fly from there until the goal. It was for sure the most exciting one as I jumped into first place after the last half," he said. "It was for sure very nice flying against Mitch.
"I felt very strong."
The two pilots will meet in Macedonia for the World Championships later in August.
Siegel, who was tied for the lead after the first task, was thrilled to pull off the win. The fourth task was also his favourite to complete, as the day was the "most competitive" of them all.
"We had extreme fast flying," he said. "In the last task, we weren't sure if we were going to fly because the winds were pretty strong and it was raining in the morning. But then it cleared up really well."
Siegel is based out of Toronto, not exactly a paragliding mecca, but often travels for work and can get some air time on the road.
"More than 50-per-cent of the year, I'm travelling around the world," he said.
"Toronto has a few spots, but it's not good for training."
Meanwhile, Vancouver's Nicole McLearn captured the women's title once again, posting a cumulative score of 1,320 to top fellow Canadian Claudia Schwab's 1,164.
McLearn's favourite task of the week was the second on July 23, where pilots flew toward Face Mountain and Mount Sampson.
"[It's] a little bit further than a lot of pilots are comfortable doing on their own, but we had a big group with us and the weather was really, really good," she said. "We had a lot of very happy pilots at the end of the day who were busy taking photographs and oohing and ahhing at the glaciers and all the snow-capped mountains."
She also enjoyed how high she and other pilots could get that day, though at times, it was perilously close to the airspace limit.
"The clouds were popping all over the place, so we were racing as fast as we could to get around the course line without getting sucked up into the clouds," she said.
With a boost from the fact that the United States held its national event in the weeks before the Canadian contest, several international competitors showed up to compete at both, inflating the ranks while promoting the Pemberton area.
"We do have a fairly conservative group of pilots in Canada, so whenever we have people showing up from outside of the country, it always helps to improve our skill level by pitting ourselves against people we don't get to fly with," McLearn said. "Having all these international pilots come to Pemberton is good for our sport in that it allows us to get our skill level up."
While there's been some consideration of trying to host a major event in Pemberton annually, McLearn feels that the current biennial pattern works well.
Siegel, however, would be happy to see Pemberton utilized more greatly.
"In general, Canada is not a big paragliding nation, unfortunately," he said. "I hope they can expand this a little bit more. Maybe we can have a pre-World Cup [event] and make people understand that we have some outstanding competition flying in this area."
The winners in the remaining three categories were: Canadian Evo Beshinsky (sport); American David Hach (fun); and American Christopher Cote (serial).
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