This year 21 gas balloons from 13 nations competed: LEŸS and HOUVER travelled 1,834.72km to take the win. They were the only team that managed to navigate through a thin corridor of airspace between Kaliningrad and Belarus, which allowed them to fly northeast across Lithuania and Latvia. They landed in Estonia before the Russian border. Some 500km behind them, many pilots had to land in Poland because of airspace around the city of Kaliningrad and the country of Belarus.
French pilots Vincent Leys and Christophe Houver won the famous gas-balloon race over the weekend of 8-10 September 2017, and had made the long journey back to Fribourg to accept their medals. Leys said: “Winning the Gordon Bennett Cup 2017 is a dream come true.” Leys and Houver travelled 1,834.72km to take the win. They were the only team that managed to navigate through a thin corridor of airspace between Kaliningrad and Belarus, which allowed them to fly northeast across Lithuania and Latvia. They landed in Estonia before the Russian border.
Some 500km behind them, many pilots had to land in Poland because of airspace around the city of Kaliningrad and the country of Belarus. Switzerland’s Kurt Frieden and Pascal Wutprächtiger (SUI-1) landed just short of the border with Lithuania to come second, winning silver. They had flown a tactical but slower race, landing after covering 1,366km. Close behind them in third place, Spain’s Anulfo Gonzales Redondo and Angel Aguirre Rial also landed close to the Lithuanian border. They covered 1,334km.
