Nadiah Wafa, a crazy girl that likes extreme sports

I’m just a crazy girl that likes extreme sports. I started with skydiving; then one of my instructors  who was doing paragliding asked me to try it, and I fell in love with the sport.

My first paragliding experience was in Kuala Kubu Baru, Selangor. I started my training there, and my first solo was there. Then I branched out to fly in Jugra and other places.

This was a year and a half ago, but I became very active after a few months because I was in this paragliding community, and I followed my instructor and a few friends. And I started flying every weekend.


Internationally, we have paragliding competitions all over the world, but in Malaysia, we don’t really have a full time paragliding athlete yet, one that has competed in all the international competitions and achieved a certain ranking.

So it started when I went to Abu Dhabi last year. I got inspired and said: “Yeah, I want to be fully committed to this, I want to be a paragliding athlete.”

Paragliding has been around for almost 10 years in Malaysia, but the growth is slow. The community is small, and we don’t have professional competitive paragliding athletes that take part in competitions. Perhaps people don’t see a future in that as yet.

Nadiah in Dubai with the World Air Games stands behind her.
But there are professional male paragliding athletes that do commercial tandem flights as a full-time job. For me, it’s my passion and my dream.

I want to be the first female Malaysian (professional) paragliding athlete. If I’m able to enter the World Air Games four years from now, I will be the first Malaysian to do so.
The coach I’ve engaged is an ex-world champion. He’s from Indonesia and he’s been paragliding for almost 20 years.

I have a four-year plan for paragliding. Basically, the first year is all about full training with my instructors. The second year is about exposure, getting a feel of more competitions, both local and international.

The third year is about ranking, to take part in more international competitions to get the points to qualify for my ultimate goal, the World Air Games, in the fourth year.