How GAP Scoring Works

GAP is the scoring system used at most paragliding (PG) and hang gliding (HG) cross-country competitions worldwide. It is maintained by the FAI/CIVL (the international body that governs free-flight sports) and defined in Section 7F of the FAI Sporting Code.

The name "GAP" comes from its original creators — Gerolf Heinrichs, Angelo Crapanzano, and Paul Mollison — who designed it in the early 2000s. It has been refined many times since then.

The core idea is simple: a perfect task day is worth 1000 points. Those 1000 points are divided among four categories — distance, time, leading, and arrival — and each pilot receives a share of the available points based on how they performed relative to the other pilots. If the task day wasn't ideal (few pilots launched, nobody flew far, etc.), the task is worth fewer than 1000 points.

If you've never flown a competition task before, here's how it works:

The task committee defines a route as a series of turnpoints — GPS coordinates with a cylinder radius around each. Pilots must fly through (or into) each cylinder in order. A typical task looks like this:

• Launch — Where pilots take off. You must be at launch to be scored.
• Start of Speed Section (SSS) — The "start gate." Your timed run begins when you cross this cylinder. Some competitions use a fixed clock start; others let you choose when to start.
• Turnpoints — Intermediate waypoints you must tag in order. You "tag" a turnpoint by flying into its cylinder (typically 400m–2km radius).
• End of Speed Section (ESS) — The finish line for timing. Your speed section time stops here. In many tasks, ESS is the last turnpoint before goal.
• Goal — The final turnpoint. Reaching goal means you completed the task. In PG, you must reach goal (not just ESS) to receive time points.

Your speed section time is measured from when you cross SSS to when you reach ESS. Your flown distance is measured along the optimized route through the turnpoints you reached.

Not every task day deserves a full 1000 points. If conditions were poor and most pilots bombed out near launch, the scores should count for less in the overall standings. GAP handles this with task validity — a multiplier between 0 and 1 that scales the available points.

Task validity is the product of three independent sub-validities:

The overall task validity is:

\( \text{Task Validity} = \text{Launch Validity} \times \text{Distance Validity} \times \text{Time Validity} \)

And the total available points for the task are:

\( \text{Available Points} = 1000 \times \text{Task Validity} \)

On a great day with good conditions, task validity will be close to 1.0 and there will be nearly 1000 points on offer. On a poor day, it might drop to 200–400 points.

The available points are divided among four categories. The split depends on how many pilots made goal — this is called the goal ratio.

• Distance Points — Reward how far you flew. Always the largest share.
• Time Points — Reward how fast you completed the speed section. Worth more when many pilots make goal.
• Leading Points — Reward pilots who led the way at the front of the pack (also called "departure points"). Optional — not all competitions use them.
• Arrival Points — Reward early arrival at ESS. Hang gliding only. Optional.

When nobody makes goal, almost all points go to distance. As the goal ratio increases, more points shift to time and leading. This makes sense — if everyone completed the task, the interesting question is who was fastest, not who flew farthest.

The weight of each component is calculated from a polynomial formula based on the goal ratio. For example, when the goal ratio is 0 (nobody made goal), the distance weight is about 0.9 (90% of points). When 50% of pilots make goal, the distance weight drops to about 0.55.

Every pilot who launches receives distance points, making this the "bread and butter" of your score. The formula is straightforward:

\( \text{Distance Points} = \dfrac{\text{Your Distance}}{\text{Best Distance}} \times \text{Available Distance Points} \)

The pilot who flew the farthest gets the full distance points. Everyone else gets a proportional share based on how far they flew.

Time points reward pilots who completed the speed section quickly. The key rules:

• Paragliding: You must make goal to receive any time points.
• Hang gliding: You must reach ESS to receive time points.

If you're eligible, your time points are based on your speed fraction — a value between 0 and 1 that measures how close your time was to the fastest pilot's time:

\( \text{SF} = \max\!\left(0,\; 1 - \sqrt[3]{\dfrac{(\Delta t)^2}{\sqrt{t_{\text{best}}}}} \right) \)

Where \(\Delta t\) is the difference between your time and the best time (in hours), and \(t_{\text{best}}\) is the fastest pilot's time (in hours).

This cube-root formula creates a generous curve: pilots close to the fastest time get nearly full points, and the penalty increases gradually for slower times. It's not a cliff — finishing 10 minutes behind the winner still earns you a good share of time points.

\( \text{Time Points} = \text{SF} \times \text{Available Time Points} \)

Leading points (sometimes called "departure points") reward pilots who take the risk of flying at the front of the gaggle and leading the way towards goal. Without this incentive, the optimal strategy would be to wait in a thermal and let others do the pathfinding.

Leading points are optional and not all competitions enable them. PG competitions that use leading points give them a higher weight than HG competitions.

Hang gliding only. Arrival points reward pilots based on their order of arrival at ESS. The first pilot to reach ESS gets the most arrival points, and later arrivals get progressively less.

The first arrival receives roughly 100% of the available arrival points, while the last arrival still receives about 20%. The curve is defined by a polynomial that ensures even late arrivals get meaningful points.

Arrival points are optional and can be disabled in competition settings. They do not apply to paragliding competitions.

Your total score for a task is simply the sum of your four component scores, rounded to the nearest whole number:

\( \text{Total} = \text{round}(\text{Distance Pts} + \text{Time Pts} + \text{Leading Pts} + \text{Arrival Pts}) \)

Pilots are ranked by total score (highest first). In case of a tie, the pilot with the greater flown distance is ranked higher.

GlideComp implements the core GAP formulas from the 2024 edition of the CIVL Sporting Code Section 7F. All validity polynomials, weight distributions, and point calculations match the official specification. However, there are some features from the full spec that are not yet implemented:

GlideComp defaults to having leading and arrival points disabled. These must be explicitly enabled in the competition parameters.

The task distance calculation may differ slightly from other scoring tools (such as AirScore) due to differences in route optimization algorithms. This affects the absolute point values but not the relative ranking between pilots.

The scoring engine source code is open and available on GitHub.

• CIVL Sporting Code Section 7F — XC Scoring (2024 Edition)
  The definitive specification. Contains all formulas, coefficients, and rules including penalties, stopped tasks, and series scoring.
• FAI/CIVL — International Hang Gliding and Paragliding Commission
  The governing body that maintains the GAP scoring rules and organizes World and Continental championships.
• FAI Sporting Code
  The full collection of FAI sporting codes across all air sports. Section 7 covers hang gliding and paragliding.