Paragliding is one of the youngest of the so-called "extreme" sports.
Its history begins in 1965, when a certain Dave Barish developed the sailwing. He was a NASA engineer who was working on improving the parachutes used to land spaceships. From here a new discipline was born that was called slope soaring, or slope flight.
At the same time, Domina Jalbert, a Canadian inventor, created a parachute equipped with caissons to be used instead of the classic parabolic parachute, the parafoil. Unlike the parachute, the latter was easier to govern, both in flight and descent.

Dave Barish performed in 1966 and 1968, with Dan Poynter (writer and designer), numerous demonstrations of slope soaring on a ski jumping board. This meant that many climbers began to take an interest in this new discipline, perceiving the possibility of gliding after an ascent, in an effective, fast and above all fun way.

Ten years later, precisely in 1978, three French paratroopers (Jean Claude Bétemps, Gèrard Bosson and André Bohn) took off with rectangular parachutes from a mountain in Haute-Savoie, sanctioning the beginning of the increasing interest of many paratroopers towards the slope flight.

Laurent de Kalbermatten was the first to invent in 1985 the first paraglider designed specifically for flight: it was a more efficient, easier to inflate and better-performing parachute.
From that moment on, paragliding will never stop evolving, both as materials used and as construction techniques, becoming a sport in its own right.


Now that you know the origin, you are ready to find out Where to experience the thrill of a paragliding flight