The Red Bull X-Alps is renowned for being the world’s toughest adventure race. © zooom / Felix Wölk

Porcher Sport, the Sports and Leisure Division of Porcher Industries and a leader in high-performance fabrics for airborne and nautical sports, will be a race sponsor of the Red Bull X-Alps 2019. Porcher Sport will power the world’s toughest adventure race, held in June 2019, with all entering athletes using Porcher Sport’s enhanced paragliding fabrics.

The group will showcase its Skytex 27 (27gsm) performance material, announce its forthcoming strategy into the outdoor apparel and equipment sectors and showcase a prototype of its newly developed ultra-lightweight performance fabric that weighs only 21gsm and which will be available in 2020.

“We are very excited to sponsor the Red Bull X-Alps 2019 race for the first time and to see how our materials enhance the athlete’s performances this year,” commented Comments Olivier Gros, Head of Porcher Sport. “This is truly one of the toughest physical races in the world and one that requires robust yet super lightweight materials to power the athletes and transport them across the finish line safely. I am proud to confirm that our Skytex 27 fabric demonstrates this balance and already cannot wait to see the lighter 21gsm version in action in 2020.”

This year, 32 of the world’s top paragliders and mountain runners will line up for the start of the X-Alps 2019 race, with all athletes using Porcher’s Skytex 27 to power their wings. 

The Skytex 27 light paragliding material is used almost exclusively by manufacturers of top of the range competition paragliders and kites including Ozone, Advance, Niviuk and Skywalk. Specifically engineered to be lower in weight with an optimised warp design, Skytex 27 uses a unique Porcher Sport PU coating for stability in flight. In 2017, four of the five highest ranked athletes of the 2017 X-Alps race used Skytex gliders.

The Red Bull X-Alps, starting on 16 June, is renowned for being the world’s toughest adventure race and takes place every other year in the European Alps. Racers may only run, hike or fly their paragliders to navigate the course’s series of turn points that take them from Salzburg to Monaco. The 2019 course is tougher than ever with a straight-line distance of 1138 km and 13 turn points that take the competitors through Austria, Germany, Italy, Switzerland and France before they reach the finish in Monaco.

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