The 28th FAI World Aerobatic Championships has concluded in Chateauroux, France with the Final Freestyles (Four Minute program) flown today followed by an airshow.
Alexandre Orlowski of France is the new Overall World Aerobatic Champion, taking home the prestigious Aresti Cup. Alexandre's rise in aerobatics has been meteoric. A French Air Force pilot flying with the EVAA (France's military pilot group flying in FAI Aerobatic Championships), he is qualified in the Mirage 2000 and Alpha Jet. In 2013, he flew in Advanced category and came in 2nd overall in the European Advanced Aerobatic Championships in Radom, Poland. He also won Gold Medals in the Known and Free Programme at WAC but fell to 12th place in the Free Unknown. However, his lead was insurmountable and he went on to capture the title. Orlowski flew one of the French Air Force's Extra 330SC's, F-TGCJ.
In second place was fomer World Champion Mikhail Mamistov (Russia) and in third, Castor Fantoba (Spain), the reigning European Aerobatic Champion in Unlimited. For the first time at WAC, the Russians flew the German-built Extra 330SC as well as their long-time aerobatic mount, the Sukhoi SU-31.
Aude Lemordant won the Women's World Aerobatic Championship for the second time in a row in her Extra 330SC, F-HXAL followed by Svetlana Kapanina (Russia) and Melissa Pemberton (USA).
Team winners were (1) France, (2) Russia, and (3) USA. Because of insufficient women's entries in the WAC this year, Teams became "mixed gender" so Lemordant's and Kapanina's scores were counted in the calculation of team results. France retains the Nesterov Trophy for their performance.
Photos of Orlowski and Lemordant are featured below. Detailed results can be found at https://www.civa-results.com and at https://www.iac.org/unlimited-team-2015-news-updates. The WAC organizers also produced a superb series of videos which can be found at https://www.iac.org/unlimited-team-2015-video.
Finally, our own Evan Peers has been in France as official team photographer and a WAC gallery of photos can be found at https://www.iac.org/gallery/wac2015.
Our congratulations to France for its outstanding performance and our US Team for its outstanding performance, resilience, perseverance, and dedication to the sport -- as well as their outstanding sportsmanship!
