21 January 2004, The Press
By MATT CONWAY
A former Christchurch woman who plunged to her death in an Australian paragliding accident apparently forgot to buckle her harness.
Champion pilot Jill Borst, 41, dangled from the lines of her paraglider as it stalled, crumpled, then fell into pine trees near Bright, north-east of Melbourne, on Sunday.
No-one clearly witnessed the final awful moments, or whether Borst lost her tenuous grip mid-air.
Either way, she was killed instantly. Her body was found a short distance from the paraglider, or "wing".
Borst was using a new cocoon-style harness on the paraglider. Two buckles that would have held her in were found after the crash, undamaged and undone.
Inquiries have been started by the Victorian State Coroner and the Hang Gliding Federation of Australia.
Investigators will consider Borst's unfamiliarity with the new harness, along with what is known as "advanced syndrome" – a tendency for veteran paragliders to become complacent or inattentive during pre-flight checks.
A former New Zealand police detective, Borst was a two-time national paragliding champion who measured up to the best male competitors.
Last year she became the first New Zealand woman to compete against Australian men in the Trans-Tasman Paragliding Challenge. New Zealand won.
Borst was training for her first tilt at the world paragliding championships in Brazil next year. She had previously been ranked third in the world.
In 2001, the cheery, go-getter moved from Christchurch to the gliding mecca of Bright with her partner Craig Collings, a four-times NZ paragliding champion. "We had a fantastic relationship," he said.
"She made a lot of friends. She smiled all the time. She was just easy to be in the presence of.
"She'd touched a lot of people. There are a lot of sad faces round here."
Borst got into immediate trouble launching off Mystic Hill, near Bright, on Sunday afternoon.
It was her fifth flight using the new cocoon harness, and she could not get her legs into the sleeve.
Collings, about to fly separately, advised Borst by radio what to do. She did not reply. After about a minute he lost sight of her round a ridge. It was a 500m drop from the launch pad to the landing area.
"We just assumed she had gone down and landed. We didn't know there was a problem with the harness," Collings said.
He was in the air when the radio call came: Borst had crashed into the pine plantation. He was not, at that point, told the worst.
"I cried all the way down," Collings said. "I thought she'd maybe broken her leg."
The couple often talked about the perils of paragliding, especially the importance of harness checks.
"In this case she obviously didn't check it well enough," Collings said.
"Both Jill and I knew there were risks involved but we never expected it to pan out like this."
Borst worked as a part-time gardener, freeing herself to chase the mountain thermals.
Collings said they were living their dream, "not just dreaming it".
"She was a fantastic woman," he said. "She hadn't finished blossoming."
A memorial service for Borst was to be held in Bright today.
Jillian Michelle Borst will be flown home to Christchurch, where her funeral is expected to be held early next week.
The remembrance site for Jill is at: http://www.jillborst.homestead.com
