Zain Hassan Zaidi from Team Pakistan

For once, there's a competition that rewards people for folding. On paper, the competition at the Red Bull Paper Wings World Finals was fairly evenly matched. But the key for contestants in the two-day paper plane contest was what they did with it.

A total of 253 pilots came from 83 countries for the world paper plane championships, which were held May 1 and 2 in Salzberg, Austria. Judged in categories including longest distance, longest airtime, and aerobatics, it was representatives from Brazil, Japan, and Croatia who proved to excel at folding and flying their sheets of standard A4 paper.

Here, Zain Hassan Zaidi from Team Pakistan launches his plane during the aerobatics portion of the event.

May 5, 2009 5:52 PM PDT

Photo by: Rutger Pauw/Red Bull