South Africa’s Julian Boulle was announced as the first winner of the World Wingsuit League (WWL) Grand Prix late last week.

The competition saw competitors compete for the fastest time for the first time in their sport of wingsuit flying. The event took place in China’s Hunan Province, and competitors had to leap from Tianmen Mountain, from a height of 1 400 metres, to see who could travel the fastest over a specified distance – the Tianmen Mountain Tramway traverses the race course, and its cable was the finish line.

Boulle had finished fastest in the qualifying event held along the same route, and claimed victory with a final time of 23,410 seconds.

There wasn’t too much difference in times achieved by the rest of the pack, and the results were finalised as such:

1. Julian Boulle (ZA) – 23,41 seconds
2. Espen Fadnes (NOR) – 23,55 seconds
3. James Boole (UK) – 23,84 seconds
4. Jhonathan Florez (COL) – 24,15 seconds
5. Jeff Nebelkopf (USA) – 24,25 seconds
6. Jon Devore (USA) – 24,56 seconds
7. Tony Uragallo (UK) – 24,89 seconds
8. Mike Swanson (USA) – 25,13seconds

So the idea is to drop with as much speed as possible, then angle yourself into a line that would be able to get you to a required mark as fast as you can.

Boulle became a skydiving photographer at the age of 21, and he has made more than 11 000 skydives and 1 600 wingsuit flights to his name.

This is footage from the final. Please enjoy the newsreader realising that he could never have imagined he’d be reporting live about something like this:

You can see more images, and find out more about the growing sport over at the World Wingsuit League Facebook page.

[Sources: CNTV]