Meet the Irish HG Worlds Team

The Irish Hang Gliding & Paragliding Association are proud to sponsor Geoff McMahon and Shaun O'Neill in the 2009 Hang Gliding World Championships in Laragne this summer. It would have been even prouder to be able to sponsor a larger team (as it did in the 2008 Pre-Worlds) but the other three pilots basically turned out to be pretty crap and we weren't going to waste any more money on them after they eliminated themselves from the last year's pre-Worlds comp in a variety of spectacular accidents, including one involving divorce papers! Ah well, ever the optimists, the IHPA would like to introduce its streamlined, refined team of two, who will test their skills to the limit when they join the fray in the skies above Laragne... or bomb out trying!

Geoff McMahon
Mountainy man from the wilds of Co. Clare, Geoff (pictured here laying in wait for the Red Bull chicks to come out of hiding) is a certifiable aircraft maintenance engineer with a slightly worrying "ah sher-fuck it!" tendency.

After failing miserably to get off with the stimulant chicks (above) Geoff sent away for a Russian mail-order bride and was happily surprised to discover that they are not all steroid enhanced weight lifters with hairy chests, deep voices and over-developed Adam's apples!

Geoff currently holds the All-Ireland hang gliding XC distance record, which previously stood unbroken at just under 80 miles for over twenty years... and not for the want of trying! XC flying in Ireland is difficult at best and is hampered by an all too close coastline wherever you start from!

Having flown Aeros Combats for going on nearly a decade, Geoff jumped ship this year (after discovering his future intended used to work for the Aeros quality control division) and is now flying the latest Moyes LightSpeed RS for the 2009 HG Worlds. Here's hoping some of the Moyes magic rubs off on his comp results... 'cos let's face it, we're fucked if it doesn't!

Skuffy Le Brasser O'Neill (a.k.a. Shaun)
Pictured here with a prize winning turnip, which he grew himself when he embarked upon a career in horticulture, Shaun is not blind to the irony that a certain part of his anatomy also looks uncannily like a turnip (according to a confidential report leaked by the Irish team doctor.)

Skuffy, who's grandpappy kicked over his hay-seed roots, sold the farm in Ireland and moved to England to earn a living, finally came to his senses and left that dreary, wet, miserable land for a place in the sun, and 'bought the farm' when he married into a local wine growing dynasty not too far from Laragne. When not pruning vines as indentured slave labour for his in-laws, Shaun, or Le Brasser as be is becoming, moonlights around Provence flogging draughts of his most excellent beers to unsuspecting locals and pilots! Shaun is currently knee-deep in the building work for his new brewery and is working hard to put it on a commercial footing... or at least a few inches of concrete.

Oh... and he's also Ireland's other least worst hope of avoiding total humiliation in the eyes of 130 or the world's best pilots!

Give 'em socks, dudes!