Yesterday afternoon, five young men made their way to Weston Airport, Co. Dublin, to compete in a national championship that would see three resulting finalists represent Ireland at the Red Bull Global Final in Austria this May.
Hosted by Magician and TV presenter Joel M - a young man with 16.5 million TikTok followers to his name - and attended by select social media stars, the ceremony had everything you could expect from a Red Bull event.
Two Cessna 152 aircrafts and a fleet of branded Mini Coopers filled the corners of the spacious hangar, an endless supply of energy drinks were handed out by brand ambassadors, colourful lights beamed along the impressive runway, and DJ Patrick Rooney blasted tunes from a modified WC series military truck.
In between a series of jaw-dropping magic tricks, Joel M hyped the competitors up as they readied themselves to take new heights via a series of technical challenges to impress the judges.
Their equipment? An A4 sheet of paper.
Yes, you read that right. A global paper plane championship is coming to the iconic venue of Hangar-7 in Salzburg, Austria, in just a few weeks time. And Ireland will be there.
Following three quali-flyer events hosted at Technical University Dublin, Dublin City University and Carlow IT throughout March, five paper-pilots fought for glory in their respective categories.
As well as the obvious challenges of distance and airtime, the 2022 competition brought paper planes into the digital age with a social media-fueled challenge of aerobatics. You can see the winning clip here.
While some competitors boasted engineering prowess when it came to the mechanics of their aircrafts, others simply cited "YouTube Tutorials" as part of their game plan, but no matter their strategies, the competitors had to deal with a variety of unforeseen elements on the day.
Light breezes, physical obstructions, a rogue crow, and even one camerawoman's hair came into play on the day (she stayed remarkably still as the plane landed in her hair, "just in case they needed to measure the distance").
In the end, though, three men managed to breeze through and nail the landing.
American-born student Brian Grant and Wexford native Jamie Kinsella from Carlow Institute of Technology along with Dubliner Bill Oshafi from Dublin City University were crowned winners in the Distance, Airtime and Aerobatics categories, respectively.
Brian, Jamie and Bill will now head to Salzburg, Austria to compete at the global final where the 2022 World Champions will be crowned.
We'll be there to follow their progress so be sure to keep an eye on RTE.ie/LifeStyle to find out how Ireland fares at this unusual event.
2022 Red Bull Paper Wings Irish National Final Results:
Aerobatics:
Creative video category hosted on TikTok
- Bill Oshafi - view it here.
Distance:
Simple, whoever throws their paper plane the furthest, wins.
- Brian Grant: 37.70 metres
- Abid Ahmed: 28.30 metres
- Seb Coleman: 27.90 metres
Airtime:
Pilots must fold their planes for just the right aerodynamics to achieve the longest flight time.
- Bill Oshafi: 6.40 seconds
- Brian Grant: 5.46 seconds
- Jamie Kinsella: 4.83 seconds (winner by default)
