Balthasar Wicki and René Erni—Winning the Cup All on Their Own!

1,555.18 kilometers—that’s the distance Balthasar Wicki and René Erni covered. It was enough for them to win the world championship title in long-distance hot-air ballooning.

The start of this year’s Gordon Bennett Aeronautical Cup took place in the middle of the night in Gladbeck, Germany. It soon became clear that Team SUI-2 was taking a different route. Their balloon headed toward the Baltic Sea, while the remaining 22 balloons headed east. Near Heiligendamm, the balloon drifted out to sea on Saturday afternoon. After about five hours, they reached the southern Swedish coast.

The Suwałki Gap

The fleet had by then reached Poland and was heading toward the Suwałki Gap, which is 35 km wide at its narrowest point. This is the strip of Lithuanian territory between Kaliningrad and Belarus. Eleven balloons managed to reach and pass through it, including the two other Swiss balloons. Various teams landed on Sunday morning. SUI-3, with Nicolas Tièche and Laurent Sciboz, also decided to land. They, too, were affected by GPS spoofing and jamming—a major issue in this year’s competition.

Further Across the Sea

Meanwhile, Balthasar Wicki and René Erni flew over Estonia and took off again west of Tallinn. Part of the flight to Finland took place just a few meters above the water. Impressive. But no sooner had they reached land again than they landed. They had lost a lot of ballast over the Baltic Sea. They had the determination to push on into a third night, but not the resources. At the time they landed, they weren’t even aware that they had been leading the race for quite some time.

Then everything happened very quickly

Once again, Kurt Frieden and Pascal Witprächtiger had put themselves in an excellent position to catch up to some of the balloons ahead of them. They were ready to head into the third night. Meanwhile, the balloons from Austria, France, and Spain, with the red zone in sight, landed. The remaining Polish balloon had also landed shortly after crossing the Latvian border. Frieden and Witprächtiger’s goal was now to move up to second place. They weren’t far off. But then everything happened very quickly: What had happened? In his blog, the team explains: «Time and again, our HB-BLA sank all the way to the ground. At first, I thought it might still be too early to go that low, so I ascended a bit, but the descent would always start again, and the rate of descent increased unusually quickly. I had to keep jettisoning ballast to avoid hitting the trees. After several bags, it dawned on me: The parachute must be leaking.»

Balthasar Wicki and René Erni were thus declared the winners of this year's Gordon Bennett Cup.

The AeCS extends its warmest congratulations!