77. Comp Tactics and Strategies - JP Vandenbegine, Jimmy Huang, Francisco Mantaras

Hi there, everybody. Welcome to another episode of the Cloud Base Mayhem. I'm bringing this to you pretty much live from Argentina. I am down here in a place, a beautiful place called La Rioja for their nationals. We're kind of midweek, halfway through the comp, and I thought it'd be really fun. I've been getting a lot of questions lately about folks heading off to their first comps this winter down in Roldanillo and Mexico and stuff. And so I thought it'd be fun to put some really good comp pilots in a little group. Well, this is the first time we've done this little group talk about competition. So we talk about gaggle flying and starts and headspace and safety and wings and finding good lines and strategy and pretty much A to Z of comps. So I think you're going to really enjoy this.

My guests are from all over the world. Francisco Manteras, who has been on the last two worlds team for Argentina and a really, really good pilot, lives in the States right now. But he's doing super well here. I think he's in second or third right now overall. The Canadian, but originally from Belgium, J.P. Vandebegian. I don't think I'm saying his last name right, but J.P. or Robert. Great dude. Awesome pilot's been flying since 1998. Been in a lot of comps. And lastly, Taiwanese guy, but also living in the States, Chin Chin Huang. We call him Jimmy. He's also been flying comps for a long time.

So I just had sat these guys down and you'll hear some traffic noise in the back and you'll hear a lot of bugs. We're at this hotel. We're outside. Francisco was packing a reserve when we were doing this. So there's some noise. We are not in the studio, as you can tell with the noise behind me. But super fun talk. A lot of laughs. You're going to enjoy it. And before we get into it, one of the questions that was asked that I didn't get to on that last last ask me anything show was. One of our Patreon supporters asked if I could lay out like the perfect dream year, if I could go anywhere and to fly every month of the year, where would I go? And a little bit of thoughts behind that. So I put together a little list here. This is just if I had the year off and plenty of cash and I just wanted to fly my brains out.

And these are the places that I would certainly think about going. So month by month, January, which is actually what I'll be doing. This. This year is I'd go to Valle de Bravo. Pretty hard to beat Valle. The comp scene there is awesome. The flying there is totally reliable. The food's great. It's cheap. The pilots are awesome. And Miguel runs the best show on Earth in my mind. So that's that'd be where I would go and actually is where I'm going this January and February. Depends on what you'd want to focus on. But, you know, a great place to go is Roldanillo, Colombia for nice, soft thermals, great flying, great cloud flying. A lot of people have been down there. There's always lots of lots of comps there that time of year. I'm going to be down there actually this year for the British Nationals, which end, I think, with February, February 2nd.

But February is still a really good month. December, January, February are all really good months in Roldanillo. I'd also think about going to El Hierro and the Canaries to practice acro for that's super reliable and a really nice time to be there. You can also, of course, think about New Zealand, Australia. And those are good months to be down in either of those zones. March. I've been hearing really good things about Costa Rica, very reliable, flying sixty hundred K triangles every day, so that and that would certainly be on my list. I've never flown down in Costa Rica. That'd be pretty fun. Or you can head down to Brazil and do like Baixa Guandu or any of the number of amazing sites they've got in that huge country. March can be a really good time down there. They often have comps that time of year down there as well.

April, I would go to beer in India right now is the time to be there. And beer India in the fall for total reliability. But April is the time for the really big flights. So there's a lot more down days, still a lot more weather than there is in the fall. But that's when you get a lot more instability. It's a lot colder and get but you can get way tall and push it way back into the deep Himalaya there that that would be that would be pretty fun. That's been on my list for a long time. I've flown beer a couple of times, but always in the fall, which is a much narrower season, but very reliable. And that's happening right now. Those of you who are watching X content. Yes, you're seeing flights from there every day. That kind of starts early October and goes through about the 10th of November. Typically, April, I'd also think about the Alps, some of the lower sites in the Alps, the higher sites are still too snowy.

But places like Annecy and La Rania and the Maritime Alps down south can be really good in April. The last few years, they've had big flights for like two or three days in a row. But then, you know, there's also a lot of downtime. But I really like spring flying. And it's a lot of time in Europe and it doesn't tend to be great where I live in Sun Valley. But another place you can think about going is like the Sierras start getting pretty good in April and out in California in May. Again, the Alps, I have been completely shut down in May and I've had some of the best flights of my life in May. So pretty hit and miss on the weather. The Sierras are pretty reliably producing that time of year. They can also be pretty bad.

May is kind of tough, you know, around the world. It's the monsoon season. So May is tricky. But that can be a fantastic time to hit the Sierras. And then as we move into June, but also May, you know, that's when I did the Alaska Traverse, I would go back to Alaska in a heartbeat. That's the time to be there, any really northern areas. So Norway, Sweden, Scotland, those are the months, those are the months, May and June to be in any of those places. And, you know, for me. Scotland or Alaska, pretty hard to beat. July, I'd be smack dab home in Sun Valley. I used to, I used to would have said, I used to have said probably August in Sun Valley, but these days in the West, in the U.S., it's just the fire season's vicious.

It's getting us every year. It used to be like every 10 years, you know, say what you will about climate change, but it's hammering us. And so it's pretty unbreathable often in August at home these days. So July. July is when I had the big flight a bunch of years ago. That tends to be when we get our our biggest air. And so, you know, you have a lot of down days, but pretty much anywhere in the Rockies, July is a pretty magical month. And the other one I'd consider to be the caucuses between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea across Mount Erebus, highest mountain in Europe. And that whole range has been very intriguing for a long time. There's some political stuff going on there and some things are maybe not totally safe. So, you know, it's kind of the big thing, but I would say, you know, from that side, from that standpoint, but that would be certainly a place I would take a look at in August.

I'd be up in Canada, up in Pemberton or Golden. There's been some amazing flights going down up there last couple of years. August is getting late. Certainly by the end of the month, you're not getting long flights, starts to get pretty stable, but terrific time to be up there. Again, if the fires aren't too bad. The other place I would certainly consider is Mongolia. Pakistan. stand uh those would be a couple places that would be pretty magical that time that time of year september i kind of struggled with this one september is an amazing month at home but uh the big flights have been that they've seen these uh things really dry out in the over the uh the wyoming flats uh bill belcourt and Cody Mittanck and chris galley and all those guys that are based out of uh salt lake have been doing huge flights from a couple different sites one porcupine and another lab they fly right down a freeway so it's pretty tame uh you can fly in a lot of wind there and they do some huge distance if they could make that work in july uh they would go a really really really long way but typically it just ods every day um through about end august so september is proving a really nice stomping ground to hit and hit some big downwinders there um and not october like i said earlier uh beer india is pretty hard to beat you fly almost every day um fantastic triangles there and just food i mean the whole scene there's terrific um the other one i'd consider of course is the sirtal brazil which i did last year uh kisha does the most widely known place but now they're doing these great toes from keiko and uh patu and there's a bunch of sites but that's of course where the current world record stands um from tasima which is a really tough place to make a flight from uh and uh patu and there's a bunch of sites but that's of course great work uh hats off to those guys to to make that work but um that's a lots of big patience game you're gonna be waiting around a lot to fly out of tasima but uh more reliably you go to kushida or go to patu or one of the other sites that's further inland and uh test your your heavy wind skills and flying over some pretty pretty rock and terrain uh november chile or argentina now that i'm down in argentina for this comp this place is super cool i've heard great things as well about chile they've got a lot of great things going on in chile they've got a lot of great things going on in chile they've got a lot of great things going on in chile they've got a lot and uh their nationals are next month in november in santiago i've heard great things about that so i would put those on the list and then uh december yeah i mean new zealand australia you can do the flatland thing over deniliquin and in the towing that is really hot and a lot of flies uh but they do huge distances there also a really nice time when the flats aren't working you can head up into bright and do some cool mountain flying or hill flying really for australia but uh and then uh i would put those on the list and then uh december yeah i mean new zealand australia a couple of i guess it was two years ago now i went down and did a race in zapotec which is outside of guadalajara in mexico which is really cool surrounded by big volcanoes and they're gonna have a PWC there this year so uh if you're you know you're done by a lot you're looking for a new place in mexico that would be uh top of the list so there you go 12 months of uh that'd be a pretty epic year if you could pull all those off or even just a few so those are my recommendations there are many many more wonderful places to fly but those are the ones that came to the top of my mind uh immediately and uh let's get into it here's the show and please enjoy this this talk with some really good comp pilots uh live here in argentina apologize for the sound but it's what it is enjoy hey

hey guys uh thanks for joining me here we're all in argentina and i'll do a whole pre thing before this so we're just gonna get right into it but uh why don't you just give

us a brief kind of comp history and that'll give the audience uh a little bit of know-how about who you are and your various accents okay

so my accent is typically french probably but in in reality it's a bit belgian so my name is robert van en begin i come from belgium i'm flying now for canada because that's where i live so i've been flying comps for a very very long time i think my first comp was 98 or something by the time we took pictures but i was quite uh not really uh i was at it so i stopped competing and i went back so uh i won two times the belgian championship and this year i am the canadian champion so it's quite uh quite funny for me to be champion of two countries uh and i'm i'm into uh some PWC sometimes but not that much i have quite a lot of work so it's a bit uh difficult for me to to manage everything and be able to compete a lot and so from year to year it depends

you've been in quebec how long now

it's been three year and a half now and the flying is good there yeah flying is super nice a few days a year only but but it's nice when it flies nice it's nice and what's jp jp stands for uh jean-pierre and robert but uh my uh you know my my name is robert okay

but we go by

jp jp is okay yeah okay like it uh i'm used to that too so no worries well my name is jimmy uh my real name is actually i'm originally made in taiwan and recently exported to the u.s about 30 years ago so i raced kind of on and off i was racing really seriously from 2009 to 2012 had a serious accident so i kind of stopped for five years so now i'm just kind of coming back to the racing scene since like 2016 and stuff like that so i do this more recreationally i'm not as accomplished as robert here but just trying to play the game and learn the sport and having fun so it's good to have you back thank you hi there my name is francisco i'm from argentina and uh i've been flying for a long time but uh competing not for so long although my first competition was in 2003 and then the second maybe was in 2007 or so and then i got really into it about 2011 i think when i bought my first uh comp wing i could say and uh since then i've been really engaged

and

i enjoy it and you've uh tell us about your world's experience was you've been on the world's team for argentina yeah

actually i competed the world's uh two times already with the team i've been in the team since then that was 2015 the first world i did and then the second one in italy in 2017 and it was a great experience and i'm here in argentina now competing the national championship to try to stay in the in the team as i need to be ranked within the first four of the country yeah

cool and and do you call argentina still home or is the u.s home you

know what uh both are home i guess because i work in in the states and i spend a lot of time but of course my home original it's in argentina and i think my heart is in argentina i should say yeah

cool he's been cooking us up some uh insane barbecue i have to redo my house now to make a proper argentinian barbecue it's been amazing food thank you i'm glad

you like it it's my pleasure so

let's just stick with you uh francisco um i wanted to get into we get a lot of questions about people that are just getting into comps and if you could kind of rewind the clock and you know and share with us a little bit about what you've learned um let's talk about before you launch you know like gear headspace you know i always talk about and it's not my thing and nate scales always says no there's you know we had a friend of ours forget his instruments today like that's the kind of stuff that uh i'm looking for here like what are the things that you've learned to be relaxed or kind of get into that right frame of mind well

i used to actually even write notes for myself that i should read even a few days before starting a comp and those notes were like stay away from the from the party gang you know stay away from from drinking stay away from staying up late

i don't seem to succeed but but that's the idea but that's the idea at least and i was serious about it a few years ago now i'm starting to relax a little bit more i guess too because i learned better and i have more experience so i guess i don't commit so many mistakes as i used to those mistakes i've been erasing mistakes by you know maybe writing these notes so i used to need to read them every time

i was writing these notes i used to need to read them every time i was writing

them every time now i i think i assimilated them so and

do you have any kind of like um set routines you know that you do every time no matter what like do you do you like to launch early late do you do you have any kind of set routines with your gear charging instruments you know just well

yeah i have my own routines of charging and controlling my equipment before um i can't really remember exactly right now all the routine because it's already so assimilated that i just do it

but i'm still doing it and i'm still doing it and i'm still doing it and i'm still doing it but

uh then in terms of taking off early or late or wait for whatever i just adapt to the day if i see that the day is going to be strong and and fast to to go up i guess i'd take off only not not i wouldn't say minutes but maybe half an hour before the start that supposedly gives me enough time enough time to to be at the top but some days are super slow or launch is complicated so i'm just doing it and i'm just doing it and i'm just doing it and i'm so those days i try to launch earlier so i just adapt to each day yeah for me i kind of a system you know i kind of do the same thing every time i buckle in the same way so i don't forget something and then right before i take off i tend to kind of pat myself make sure my horn is on correctly i always grab my reserve handles three times on both sides just to know where it is a little muscle memory thing just make sure instruments on everything's ready because once you're in air

you don't want to kind of make these little mistakes you know something you could have solved on the ground it's one less thing to worry about that's kind of my system uh yeah i have different routines and uh i can uh well about take off first uh usually when i go to a country i never visited uh i would take off quite early because i'd like to learn the day you know as it goes so to take off early is good good thing certainly as you enter the competition it's good to be able to understand how the air will evolve during the day that's one point another thing is i listen to music so i have two different songs one song for sleep and one song for uh to concentrate just to focus uh before the start or before the takeoff so i would uh probably get out of the group uh listen to some music my my song just to switch my mind to to the competition and then uh i'm ready to go

identify that song is it the same song all the time uh

it's always the same and it's a song i use when i'm running and it's a song that has different beats and uh some powerful beat for sprints and i like you know adrenaline and sprints and so that's that's how the flow comes okay

yeah you just brought up something how do you guys approach um fitness with flying with with uh either competitions or just xc flying is it is it something you think about is it important is it it is

it is more and more important i think today uh in the past uh for me the most important was to be able to to stand long flights uh now i'm okay with that of course you need to take care of yourself so drinking eating and stuff like that but still now i need to prepare myself before going to the camp so i do some gym and workouts and yeah stuff like that as i say the food is also important uh so when you come to a new country uh maybe switching from one food to the other can be problematic so you have to make it quite uh slowly and adapt yourself so i always come with my food also from from home and try to have always the same kind of uh of eating so i eat rice most of the days or something

real simple yeah simple basic you

know it's not gonna

make you sick and exactly okay yeah oh interesting i'm gonna start the

conversation with you and then we'll see you next time

this next question off with a story i was just over in macedonia for the nordic opens and you guys probably saw all the really tragic news and the british opens uh the british nationals i think it was the last day they had a mid-air collision and both the pilots died quite unusual um one was a very experienced pilot uh and the other was actually not in the competition um but was free flying and and you know obviously they got screwed up in the air and um so super sad um but it was it was quite interesting the very the next comp was being run by the same organizer goron who you all know and uh and he made a comment that i thought was was was really interesting that the the accidents these days like you know back in the peter he today's in the two line of the initial two liners with the r11 and the r10 and stuff it was like you know we were all just hanging on waiting for the blow up and you just don't see these gliders blowing up anymore like the the places for accidents uh you know especially in a comp like the one we're in here in argentina where it's not a PWC everybody's not on two liners there's a lot of b's there's a lot of c's you know the turning circumference is different um the knowledge is different the ability level is different and he was just ramming like you know hey the dangerous thing here is the gaggles you know it's it's it's at the start and everybody's together it's like the most dangerous time in the race and i

kind of found some new appreciation for that so i want to ask you guys about how to gaggle fly but also you know what do you think about that and and what do you think about you know the the risk of gaggle flying and do you for me

that's not the biggest risk i think when i fly depending on the gaggle of course but most of the gaggle i play with or fly with are totally okay uh it depends on the day so i've been in some gaggles in PWC in france where the gaggle was each individual flying by itself away from each other and uh so yeah it depends on the day for sure but i think flying mountains and you know lee side stuff are still maybe more uh more well i would say more dangerous for me i think uh because uh pushing the bar on the uh you know on the lee sides and stuff like that we still see pilot doing it and it's a bit weird

um yeah

yeah and maybe maybe i should rephrase that he wasn't he wasn't saying it was more dangerous for sure but that was just a risk that maybe some people were under appreciating and and and was really i think what what what caught me was that uh you know i i've really backed off my aggression in in in gaggles especially at the start because i there's no point it doesn't really seem like you know that there's not really any point in like really tightening you know turning tighter than

you know and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and

and everybody else because at the start it's the start you know it's yeah

but the point is there is only one place where you want to be is the at the correct uh place and the highest so still the fight is already on i think uh but you're right so we have to be aware and i agree with you but it's the same for when we are flying uh little groups uh whether in the flats or on the mountains i mean there's no point to risk lives of each other uh by a collision or

something like that

or pushing someone outside of the terminal the the funny thing is about paragliding is one of the sport that you have where you have to cooperate with your competitors in many other sports you fight with them and here you need them so just take care of them yeah yeah

well let's okay so before we get into gaggle flying um let's talk about starts how do you get a good start what are you thinking about you know how are you trying to maneuver um because the start is super important it's been really important here and and they're so fun i love stars yeah

i think it's it's really about timing and kind of going back a little bit about gaggle flying a little bit kind of before we move on to the start for me like it's almost like you have to share the space and sometimes when you fly with your friends enough you kind of have a relationship with them you kind of wave them over you kind of briefly talk to them or like gesture or just do a little head nod or something like that to kind of like indicate or just look at them to let them know you see them and so they're aware and that's what you're doing and that's what you're doing and that's what you're doing and that's what happens you know usually in a tight situation let's say if you have a slow day like in australia this year in PWC at the bright you know the takeoff was there was really weak condition there's only really one or two house thermal and you have the entire 150 guys and girls you know just circling as high as it can and with free flowers flying through the the gaggle is pretty crazy but at the same time it works out you know it's great but that's that's where the fun is you know that's fun the sport you know your eyes open and you know you're just doing it

for me timing wise i just try to just relax just get to the top and i think with time and experience you're gonna kind of figure away how to kind of position yourself in the right place and i think that's kind of where the magic the flying is for me yeah i would add something is that uh maybe for me at least the last 15 minutes is some very are some very important minutes for me i need to be already at the position there uh it's no way that the last 15 minutes i should be moving from one place to the other or whatever so you've kind of set your yeah this is where i'm

gonna be i'm gonna make this work

yeah so when i take off uh my my first aim or objective is to really understand where it will well the start will happen and how and it was interesting two days before or yesterday i don't remember that we were drifting with the wind so there was a tempo and you do it one two times and then you know how long it takes to to drift with the thermal and

and by the time you have to learn it and to understand how it goes to be just there at the right moment at the right place so it's important

yeah let's talk about this you know how in all these years you've been flying francisco you know how have you learned to climb better be at the top be in the right position for a start well

uh back to the gaggle and and start uh i would say the start is the biggest gaggle of the race so first of all in terms of security and safety uh you need to recognize whoever is around you so sometimes uh i've been in uh like in Superfinal goggles start goggles or any goggle actually because it's Superfinal and the worlds are super tight and big goggles uh sometimes it's super aggressive but you know who you who you have around and those are so professional pilots that you're not afraid of them at all but sometimes in a comp like like this one uh where you have uh different levels then you really need to recognize who's around you and then you need to be more aware or less aware depending on your surrounding and uh in terms of me positioning at the top i don't know what i do i just um you know i observation for me is is a big thing flying goggle when you're out of the goggle you're flying on your own it's all about feeling but uh when you're flying the goggle it's observation and the minute you miss something you're not flying you're not flying you're not flying you're not flying you're not flying

you lose a few spots a few meters for sure i think you hit on the thing i was looking for here is that i i think i find that the best pilots are i always think about like Josh Cohn with the swivel head he sees everything he's got like 10 eyes you know and i think that the the lower hours pilots are really locked into what's here and the better pilots are and sorry the audience can't see what i'm doing i'm talking like tunnel vision versus you know looking at really swirling around and seeing everything because it's all those things

that are really important to me and yeah and yeah

it's the population a lot more do you think uh yeah if if for some reason which is the push there's no push there's no you know you don't as much area if you're a beginner you have racing i mean if you're going for like a second whether you get that advantage or you get a second he's just you get better posture and then you use that you make that feel like you're you figure out what's what's the answer to it then you know afterwards you just try to work with that gaggle and i i don't i don't know that there's just a well here's the answer but i'd like to hear your answer it seems like it's just hours and practice but yeah

yeah you're saying it is practice but um i guess uh there's two ways of approaching and and catching up with the front gaggle maybe not the lead gaggle but at least the front gaggle the gaggle you have in front of you is one is under the other one is pretty much the same altitude and the other one is above the safer one is always above and hopefully will be the best one and faster too because normally the thermal as you go higher sometimes it gets better and then flying a higher altitude normally is faster so it's the best way for me but sometimes there's no other way than just pushing low and counting on luck to try to get the thermal before the big gaggle maybe you're low but you catch it before and hopefully you catch up so it also it always depends on the day and the way it's working in my set of rules of my little notebook um i have different see i put i say if the day is low is slow always catch up uh from above but if the day is strong maybe you can catch up from under so it really depends on the day you have to adjust yeah

um the uh this was one of the kind of breakthroughs i had at one point was you know when we're first learning we're told you top out every climb talk about how that really does not apply in racing yeah

sometime when you actually top off i mean depending on what type of glide you're flying um you top off you actually spend too much time climbing because as the thermal reaches the top it actually peters out a little bit um there's also another thing when when the thermal as you flow out you know you kind of go through the falls and that could actually take all that time you spent topping off and you just wasted falling out outside of the thermals on either side of it so you

have something to say

there jp yeah yeah uh also what matters is the the the lift if the lift is very strong maybe it's best to stay in it not to leave it uh usually it works like that that uh even the leaders they are pushing a bit and they're leaving too early some terminals and then you simply stay in and you catch up easily so it really depends on the conditions i guess um i wanted to say also that you maybe sometimes you don't have to stay with the gaggle i would recommend to stay as much as you can but even today i had a strange experience when i i changed the route so the the lead gaggle were on the mountains i crossed the flats and i was way above everybody and i i reached i i managed to reach uh and uh get in touch with the lead gaggle but i was above them so i could top them stay on the same thermal with them and then it was uh kind of easy and relaxing yeah i

good idea don't be a lemming i think for sure right yeah you know don't don't distrust your good ideas because you can't have them i think there's it's easy to get locked into the gaggle mentality but sometimes you can have a good idea like you did today and it really works out i think the um the other thing about gaggle flying it seems like is is uh you know if there's if it's a big gaggle and you're you're at the bottom of it and everybody goes you know taking that time to climb to where they were is pointless because if everybody's out in front of you you can

see who's getting the lift and you know by the end of that next glide you're gonna have caught up you know that i think often you don't really need to top it out if you're at the bottom of the gaggle yeah but

being at the bottom i think the well you have to be really mentally strong to be at the bottom and it works so uh at some points i remember a competition i was in pedro bernardo everybody was staying at a mountain nobody wanted to go to the next waypoint on the flat because

of course it took me a bit of time to find the waypoint the lift sorry and when i caught it everybody came they were above me of course because i lost a lot of altitude to find this i literally saw the whole camp passing above me so i said okay i'm not grounded yet so the task is on and i won the task at the end so yeah it was amazing so it's possible it's always possible you never know what will happen uh in the next uh next moves i

really agree with um what you're saying there because you never know there's just so many variables out there and there's so many different factors that affect the day i mean the league might be a little you know tactical kind of calculating where they're going to go seeing who's around them and kind of keeping their place and maybe they will let some people go let them sniff out the thermals and while they kind of keep their you know competitors more at bay you know they might let other guys just go ahead and just kind of sniff things out you know that's kind of another play you could do just kind of use the every pilots out there to kind of gauge you know how the day is and stuff like that well the only thing i have to say about that is uh there's two different animals in this in this sport the comp of the the PWC and the professional

where uh if you leave the gaggle for sure they're going to win against you you'll never beat the gaggle but in this kind of small comps sometimes the single moves are uh really they really pay off like the move the rover did today uh we were we were doing some kind of uh gaggle flying and all of a sudden he showed up in the valley higher than everyone so that was a single move and it worked that in PWC most likely won't work so there's two different things there that you have to recognize

let's jump to that then so talk about what you shouldn't do what are the things that you learned all these years that like okay i didn't need to like me the first day you know i i i made a break too early i do it all the time uh in a great position was in a really good spot to to to win the race and i broke too early and i didn't stay with you guys i didn't stay with the gaggle and it's it's a let it's like russ ogden calls it discipline well

i think you're talking about my huge mistake no i'm talking about me

oh you did okay i

did it today okay i was leading the whole comp pretty much today and at the end i was uh so this mental aggressive mode that i kept pushing well when i was actually the highest and i could just take above everyone to go to to hit the last turn point and make it go first and instead i was so pushy today that i just left the goggle on my own again once again and uh thinking that i was doing good and the goggle behind really went up so high that uh above yeah they

got me so so globally that's lack of discipline is that what you're saying absolutely because

if you find yourself on top of everyone why was what's the rush leaving that place you know just stay there check it out breathe you know relax for a moment say what's my position what's next how far i'm from goal and should i leave or stay and then you make your decision no today i just didn't think at all i just pushed big mistake i think i think gavin was trying to uh kind of refer to the situation and me and him got into the first day of the comp we were like super psyched and just went out and charged ahead and got super low and kind of vice versa today while me and francisco's on the front he's waving at me to go and i kind of left him and kind of went to the flats by himself so he's kind of getting back at me a little bit for that but you know as we said before the day varies so much you never know what's going to happen i mean every move counts i think the best thing to do just kind of be aware of the situation around you the people around you

the best you can i think for me personally just flying comp is really just like challenging yourself because pilots every pilot has a different level especially at this comp there's beginner pilots there's you know there's world-class pilots here etc etc um but i think if you just compete with yourself and just try your best and learn from your mistake i think that's probably the best way for me to kind of approach the situation and

you had a really good um you know a lesson that we all need to be reminded of yesterday uh you came in a little bit lower i got out in a dust devil and you were like yeah i don't i don't need to do that so i'm kind of a

little get a little background with the situation so basically we just tagged last turn for him we're going to the end of speed and um while we're going to end of speed i see this giant dust devil and i see i just i have a big smile on my face right now because i see gavin just charging for the same uh dust devil too this seems just humongous it's like probably like i would say what do you think gavin like it was big it was big it was gnarly it was just trash everywhere and we're just both getting pulled into it but gavin's a little higher he's he was actually playing with uh the dust devil he's already kind of getting a little lift while i'm approaching it low and we're over like a housing development with power lines not many places land the brushes here looks like they're really low but they're probably three or four feet tall so while you know while both of us approaching this dust devil i just see gavin's kind of doing the thing next thing i see i see his wing just goes disappears he's going up the thermal sideways you know i'm like is this is this is this a good thing to do right now is this a smart thing to do and you know for me i have a new baby you know i have a new family so i when my direction approach was there's a power line around to me i just decided just hey it's better to fly tomorrow than you know spend the time at the hospital and just you know laugh it out you know but gavin took the thermal by its by the horn and made it a goal and while i was

kicking learn my lesson

no it's okay i'm okay with it you know i get to fly another day and that's really what's really all about yeah

in my in my defense audience i was quite a bit higher i think it would have been pretty scary for you to go in that thing finding good lines like this is uh this is like a science that i find impossible to teach but i i would like to get your thoughts on it because it's everything isn't it i mean i i find that most people can climb pretty well with enough hours you know but it's finding those good lines it's gliding that is uh is that really ultimate

feeling yeah uh it's really tough to teach to learn uh yeah it's but flying comps is a good uh it's a good school for that because you see all those lines especially here i think pilot were very disciplined that we spread we don't stick together and everybody spreads and so you can see the different lines and it's it's really interesting well we're develop

that more because some some of the listeners might not know what you're talking about because that that's important yeah

so we were in the lead gaggle and instead of having all pilots in one file uh one after each other we were all flying on up front all together uh and so we we cover a large area of uh of ground like a

flock of birds like birds like yeah like gooses and then uh

and then uh there you can see the difference in the glider floating a bit better you being in a less less uh favorable area and then you of course you have to react if you don't react you you stick to that and you go down and down and down so you have to change your uh your line when it's uh appropriate keep the line when it's good uh when we're talking about lines we're talking about convergence also so it's good to understand what's a convergence and how to stay on it um sometimes it's not necessary to stay

on it but

you turn you just have to go straight and then you climb climb climb climb uh we've had that like in piedrata or there are some known places for that where you you just literally can fly i don't like 10k straight yeah and you go up up up up it's amazing uh but if you're on the wrong side of the convergence then you go down down down down so that's the problem so flying lines is yeah mainly practice practice practice practice and trying to understand so first thing is of course to be aware that there are lines uh most of pilots don't even know that and once you know you have to look at birds look at other pilots and try to understand what's happening with the air and and feel it uh one thing is also flying with b helps a lot because when you're flying with the brake lines you don't feel the air as well as when you're flying with bees and then you can have some micro information that will eventually lead you to the best uh the

best line so so let's drill down a little bit in technique there what what are you doing how much pressure do you have in your hands what are you doing with your feet on your speed bar what are you what's ideally well

yeah i would say that uh for example when you were on uh end of speed uh really pushing and for the final glide uh it does matter much less uh it's more in the course when you're uh so if you're full bar you don't feel that much most of the time so you should probably release a bit the bar and it's it's working quite a lot so instead of pushing like mad trying to find the next thermal uh there are pilots uh who are flying slower but uh they just float in the air much better so at the end of the of the transition you arrive even sometimes higher than the other uh i had a race in well it was a cross country uh flight with a delta so a hang-like glider and it was amazing because the guy was pushing hard and i was uh trying to stick to the lines and he was way in front of me but super low so at the end i arrived and we we met again and so that's how i could catch up with him instead of pushing with him and it would be a nonsense huh that's interesting yeah very cool it was funny funny and interesting indeed

jimmy yeah for me um i'm kind of impatient so i kind of want to get to point at a point b as fast as i can and we just smash bar like what um robert says it's something you don't feel anything and sometimes you actually might fly through quite a bit of thermals like for for example like the chelan the last task where we were sneaking high and then we thought we could make it the goal but because we're so like into winning and just kind of making the task that we flew through like five thermals and we all of us dirted you know instead of we could just slow down a little bit just took a few turns we would have made it we were like short by 100 meter i mean it's crazy but that's where racing comes in that kind of each of the well like francisco says discipline you know you gotta have discipline and stuff like that for me personally i i tend to hold on to the beast quite heavily and i discover that for me sometimes i do kind of put most of my weight on it but right now i try to relax and just kind of pull back like a like a bow and arrow type of scenario and to me that for me that that works out for me um speed bar wise my feet is kind of like a sewing machine it's constantly moving adjusting the pitch of the machine and i'm really passionate about the glider um when you get a hard hit you know you kind of want to release the bar really quick but when i first started i would release and that would actually make the glider pitch up and slow down and then we step on speed bar again you kind of lose all that momentum and you kind of use all the potential energy you saved to gain that speed again so now i'm really good at just once i hit a bump i let go and push it right back and sometimes that's actually kind of reaffirming to just like push on that bar and feeling that there's a lot of pressure or at the front edge of the wing for me that's comforting that's like oh there's still air in front of me and things are good and

jimmy how did how did you learn how to do that has that just been flying in comps and practicing it or are you actually even going out on like sledder days when it's really mellow and doing a bunch of pendulum flying and you know is there because it's quite it's intuitive after a long time yeah it's not very intuitive in the beginning we hit a thermal when we come off our speed bars the dead wrong thing to do yeah

um for me i actually don't have a lot of time on my days off i work and i'm a full-time daddy daycare so i only fly comps and that's just kind of where i learned and i think just kind of over time i discovered that you just have to trust your glider i mean your glider today's gliders are so strong nowadays and so solid you just have to kind of test it you know for for for a long time i would literally just don't step on bar and i was like why am i coming in these races and then finishing so slow and i discovered the speed bar like wow that's an amazing tool man so as i kept pushing just pushing lemon challenging myself challenging the glider and knowing the limits of the glider you kind of get a feel what it can handle what it can't handle and that's kind of how i discovered it and um it works for me francisco you have anything to add to that uh

well what i can say is uh there's two different ways of flying it's one is trying to stay high and finding amazing lines and stuff and the other one is um you know chasing goggles and pushing the bar and the way i do it is i'm not a glider i'm not a glider i'm not a glider i'm not a glider i'm not a glider it is uh when it's a day is strong so again it's observation and defining what kind of day you're flying when i see that the day is strong normally i go from a to b as fast as possible and just try to hit the the next thermal and go up as fast as i can but if the day is soft and and not working so great maybe i don't push that much bar and actually my bar is super you know my my feet are super sensitive and releasing and pushing just to keep my glider

12 o 'clock right above my head trying not to pitch up and down and stuff like that that's the most important in a shitty day let's call it or a soft day but um again you know in a strong day maybe my technique is to hold on to those those pieces of wood on the on the b risers and uh push hard on the on my feet and uh whatever happens to the glider just manage it with my with my hands and not with my feet sometimes it's the opposites you know when when i'm trying to gain uh better lines maybe i play more with my feet but when i try to just go fast and keep the glider above i use more my hands and i find it that it really works with uh with the b risers you can really pull them and you can be maybe full bar on like today approaching to goal i didn't release bar ever since the last thermal and uh in my glider sometimes was searching really bad and you know how bumpy the air was today right and

i'm trying to gain better lines

and uh i just hold on to those those b risers and controlled it only with the b risers otherwise i would not catch up and that way i was able to gain a couple of spots in there and to go yeah you

guys talk about instruments a little bit are you using sticking with speed bar and with speed and glide and climbing and everything but are you using mccready are you using polar curves are you you know how much are you looking versus how much feel

i don't i don't use the instrument as i could probably because those instruments are amazing but i use my feelings and i look at the the glide ratio and the the speed of going down or up and stuff like that and then try to come up with my my best glide like that it's not that i really understand my instrument i have to say i don't understand it as i as i wish to you know some people maybe at josh kahn or some of these guys that are really good at gliding and climbing and maybe they do better understanding them and they get more out of them for sure yeah

i'm not really instrument guy either you know i was just recently in australia and one of the pilots garrett there was making fun of my dinosaur instruments that i was using so again which

are go ahead and tell the audience old school garmin

and then a 60 30 flight tech but for me personally i just i actually only look at two things i look at a glide ratio so my glider i know it flies around average on if i'm not even getting close to that i just step on it until i get as close as to it possible to eight to one because usually when you're not gliding well you probably in sync anyway so you step on you're trying to get get out of that sync and for me that's kind of the way i fly i just kind of look at an angle and just go with the

flow and do you are you pretty aggressive about changing your direction of flight when you're in sync or are you just hammering bar no

i do i actually use my b risers or weight shift or just even rolling my ankle a little bit to change the speed bar and actually will turn the glider 15 degrees or so i don't do the 45 degree turn thing i just do a little 15 degree here and there and just see if the sync rate's going up or down and just kind of finding that fine line and it just takes time to kind of figure that out but sometimes you're just in sync you just have to power through it you know yeah

i'm finding the sync here really strong uh and and like big seams of it which are obviously the other side of uh you know really nice because there were some nice convergence lines and stuff having more luck today with being a lot more aggressive like when we do these big you know when you guys uh i'm sure you've all done these too like in brazil the big downwinders they do up on the on the sertão and quixada and that kind of thing i learned there that you can't if you just stay in the sink and hammer the speed bar because you're going downwind you're going to stay in it till the ground you know you almost had to come like 90 degrees off which was new for me you know the the whole like it's supposed to be 45 degrees that's what we learned you know that's not enough there i'm finding here it's also is that are you guys finding the same uh

when the sink is strong you do 90 degrees for sure yeah uh like i said if the day is strong maybe you just push the bar and a to b as fast as possible but especially with a soft day you better do your 90 degree and find a better better line for sure and again back to observation you have to really look even behind and see what the guys are doing behind because behind they can tell if

they're going

better on a on a line more to the right or more to the left so for sure but switching directions i mean not switching directions but turning 90 degrees sometimes you have to do it because like you're saying otherwise you push all the way to the ground sometimes it happens that you have even to go back i mean you were francisco was talking about pilots climbing on the back yeah if it's climbing and you're on the wrong side of the climb you should go back maybe sometimes so if

this was a this was something i also learned from josh keep bringing josh up josh bot but um and i i see it in Chrigel in the X-Alps all the time he's constantly going back in order to stay in the air

kind of formatted uh and comes when i learn comes people keep going yeah go go go and it's not good sometimes you have to think and pause a bit and look around and so uh pilots have a trick to do on tour from time to time just to look around that's what i do sometimes just uh zero five or something when you don't lose a much altitude just to check what's going on around you and go back or back to course uh talking about instruments uh we were discussing about the lines a bit earlier in the discussion uh instruments are useful for that also because you can feel the air uh well when you look at your speed so if you don't touch the bar of course you will have also lines with better speeds or of course your vario you have to look at it so it helps for that uh it certainly helps for uh distance to next uh next waypoint of course that's what i'm looking at uh and also what's very important to me is to know how high i am above ground uh at goal so then it gives me the trigger to know okay now i can push the bar i have a bit of uh of a buffer and now i can go through and so yes it's important to know

instrument does ring or they give you a signal or audio signal to to to inform you that okay now you're on glide to go you can just push the bar and go uh so it's important to read the instrument but i share uh the thoughts of francisco and jimmy that uh the most important is of course to look around so uh i had a funny story about that but it's looking at instruments uh it was in the PWC and we had this waypoint but the waypoint was on uh on a small uh shoulder on the mountain and i was looking at my instrument and i was really getting close to to the waypoint but at the same time i was getting close to the ground and i was going down smoothly but gently and and so a few meters before uh the waypoint i i understood that i would never make it so i turned and because i was watching only my instrument i was so low that doing my turn i landed so

i took my glider on my shoulder i went like really 10 meters up and then blim blim it tagged the waypoint i took off from there and i was right it was final glide to go so i did one final glide and i was on goal but i wasn't landed so it was funny i

love it um that just made me think of something else the uh the first day um you you were on final glide and you bombed out yeah and then jimmy you did yesterday we all have we've all bombed out many many many many times um is there a common theme is there a comp you know is there is there a um when when you're on the ground after those is it is it is it it's very often the same thing like shit this is something i i really shouldn't do anymore because i you know or well

of course it's competition so you have to play the game anyway so if you don't want to push maybe you shouldn't join a competition

if you

don't want to take some risk if you don't want to to you know gamble a bit uh you're well a bit i say that um well uh the the cool thing with competition nowadays is that you you have a day that you can remove from your scoring so you are allowed to do one mistake in most of the comps uh pushing is part of the game but uh one thing is we mentioned it earlier is getting isolated and maybe sometimes in front you have this feeling that wow you can do everything and you know that's your day well sometimes it is so the the most difficult part of it is that you have to recognize it sometimes you're on the flow and you can really win the task and i i won a few tasks in my career so and that's really exciting that's super nice uh it's a nice reward so i guess that's why why we all most of

the time we're in the same situation and we're in the same situation and we're

the pilots fly winning a task it's a it's a real nice experience but besides that when you land and when you bond out uh the difference between the pilots or amongst the pilots is when you have a strong mental because you have to have this capacity of get rid of that and you know erase the board and okay next day it's a new new start and let's move on uh it's difficult it was difficult yesterday for jimmy it was difficult for me the first day we were drinking a lot of beers to forget that but uh it worked so jimmy

before we uh i want i want to make maintain that a line of thought for a second he was talking about um going back and one of the things that i i've personally learned is that you know that it it often seems like the distance to go back is like oh my god you know i never did it for a while and now every time i do do it you you're immediately with them like the penalty is is zero i find that the race is never it's potentially one there but where i tend to i think is the penalty is higher for when you're turning in crap you know like if it's an obvious climb that's behind you it seems like it's the reward is always there to go get them even though it seems like it's the wrong way if you have experience with that yeah i mean

i deal with that all the time because you keep wanting to push forward and you don't want to backtrack and waste time but at the same time is once you're on the ground you're on the ground you're not playing the game anymore so you kind of have to remind yourself that every time that turning back is a good thing it's okay to turn back it's okay to apologize to the thermal gods you know like go back and get a climb regather yourself and then again the race is long you know it could be very beginning of the day and if you're already low why not maybe towards the end you're racing yeah take take some risks here and there but on that the moral cycle is really uh hindering this little answering session but

we've got some in the background sorry yeah

yeah we're surrounded yeah uh one thing though is uh if you remember how how you went outside the the last thermal is also something to keep in mind because if it's if there was a you were on the lee side and it was a big sink after the thermal then it might be not a good option to go back to it yeah uh so it really depends but if there are so strong terminals and you know that you're not on the lee side of the thermal and that you will be able to catch up when you turn back then yes you have to consider uh going back to the to the gaggle uh but for that you have to maybe one of the main theme is uh here to be aware of the surroundings so of course if you push like mad and after 10 minutes you realize that oh maybe i should go back i will have a look it's too late yeah so once you leave a thermal and you know that there are people still in the you should check what they're doing and sometimes

will hit the core at the right moment you're leaving the thermal and then you're definitely not in a good position so you should go back immediately so it depends yeah sure but the main thing is be aware of happen what happens to around you and then the surroundings so

we've got a we've got a uh a dinner to go to so i want to be mindful of our time but uh one more question then i'm going to ask you guys all so you can plant this as we're talking but uh you're like your most exciting cool comp story but before we get to that how do you guys approach the overall strategy for the week because you know we now that we have ftv which is super cool it allows us to push a lot harder um you know francisco this is an important comp for you i know you're taking it pretty seriously because it means you know defending your position for the world's team rewind to the before the first day how how would you generally approach day one versus day three versus the last day and obviously that depends on where your position is kind of overall strategy well

see i'm bad for this i'm not a strategic guy i guess uh i'm the guy that pushes every day pretty much try to do my best every day and uh i know we have a day that we can discard if we make a mistake uh but you should never count on that day but just try to do your best every day and if one day doesn't work then you can discard it at the same time that means that you can push it you can push and make

it work and you can push it and you can push it

maybe you missed you're mistaken by pushing but that gives you the opportunity to do it and discard it if you if you didn't make it so i guess uh trying the best every day is my only my only strategy here yeah yeah and uh again you know it's like you count on that so i think you can push every day pretty much and would that

would that change for you at all say if you were going into the last day and you were in the lead or you were say securely in second or third would you would you be more conservative well it always depends on what type of tasks you did before

for sure so if you're comfortable you you have at least five good tasks uh you can either push it to try to win another one or you can relax and try to just uh give uh put put put in another good task in your list and uh and just be safe but uh you just heard me you know you can push it again i said i think uh my my technique is just to push it every day pretty much cool for me i just kind of approach this as a learning experience and some kind of new at this again and for me every day i just trying to learn as much as i can and just kind of get a good feel i think the best advice i ever kind of got was just basically just fly and then let your body do its natural thing it's kind of trying to get into a flow so once you're flying the paraglider without thinking about it you're using your brain power to looking at observing what's around you the bird is looking at what's doing what the wind's doing you kind of kind of just get a bigger picture of the situation i find that really helps for me for me safety is number one you know i always consider safety is number one and um i'd rather land than not fly another day that's kind of my approach to that situation yeah

i want to dig into that just specifically with you because you you and maybe compare this to pre-accident post because you were telling some stories the other night about how aggressive you were when you first got into it you were flying like comp gliders day three and you know just like you were just full on and then and i'm did the accident was it literally that that changed it because now you're like i don't give a shit if i bomb out i'm here to have a good time yeah

it was pretty funny i actually when i started paragliding i got invited to bayou my friend paul down down to bayou de bravo i have never flown thermals he just basically told me to go learn at this coastal soaring site and then next week meet me at bayou and then literally like i showed up the week before the 2009 world championship i saw like all these cool pilots like lisa woodry like putting in the french flag on their advanced gliders and these things are so bitching just going out there flying with them it's like wow you could circle on this stuff i can get to like 6 000 feet this is awesome you know i came back just or the wrong size glider or adding two small you know a pod and everything you know i was bitching and signed up for every single race as possible just charging learning as much as i could and literally from 2009 to 2010 i got a wild card at jalan world cup and i remember meeting andre ranford from south africa and he basically kind of just told me straight up it's like hey your demographic is most likely to get hurt because you just charge and you don't care you know you most likely gonna get hurt literally within three days room i reserve so that always stuck to my head and every time i do something stupid i always kind of have that thought in my head um so yeah you just have to time and patience you know like when i jumped up class my rules was basically when the class three times before i went up a class and that's what i did so i won sport class three times won zero class three times and then when the time i jumped up that's when the enzo one came out and that was i think it was too big a jump for me i wish i would have jumped on something like an ice peak six something like that more mellow and then maybe that would have prevented a lot of accidents you know and i think i you know that's lack of experience not because the glider is bad just i didn't i didn't you

just weren't ready

i just went up

and i jumped up and i jumped up and i jumped up and i jumped up and i jumped up and i'm ready

for it and then that took a long time i mean it was stupid for us to go fly elm's valley midsummer first of all you know that's how the accident happened and um after that it took a while for me to kind of get back to the sport you know and once i'm back it's it's kind of like riding a bicycle again you kind of rediscover the fun of you know traveling to foreign places and meeting all your old friends again like seeing francisco in his home country and checking things out and seeing gavin and robert you know like different parts and it's funny like once you come to these comps you see the same guys over and over again it's kind of like reunion in certain ways another cool thing about comps is like you know you kind of go to places that normally you don't tourists don't go to you know less travel locations and really get to know the people and experience the lifestyles and stuff like that and i really highly recommend any pilots from any you know levels to do comps because i think it's great i mean you pay here how much do we pay for the comp like 150 whatever it doesn't matter a very small amount you get to fly for seven days with meteorological

background you just have pilots to talk to share ideas and just chit chat and just have a good time and learn i mean that's a great value yeah you get you know minus the expenses that come in here so

jp what about you do you have a kind of a an overall strategy or do you have because you've been racing a long time would you say 92 98 98 yeah do you have kind of a um you know a strategy that that seems to work i

would say i'm still learning first of all i came here with a firm intention not to use my uh discard day so i did it on the first day so you see i still have lots of things to know i knew it i shouldn't but anyway

yeah no it's just i mean it's a long process i think um it's also a question of mental so i i realized a few years ago that uh it's if you want to win a comp it's there is a different thing and winning comps and i think those are two different kind of persons uh all three around the table we might be more the kind of winning tasks person instead of winning comps um i've seen a lot of people winning comps without winning any task in their entire life yeah and it's a different uh way of flying so we didn't mention it today but uh yeah if you if you want to win a comp you have to fly a bit

of a different way of flying and i think that's a

more conservative and there is a way of doing it the french have a very good strategy for that it's just to put you in the position where you can kind of be dominant and wait and see what's what's going on and see what are the best opportunities and follow the best ones it happens here also we can also detect the pilots were acting or behaving like that uh i wish i would do so when i want to win a comp which i am on the way to that uh but i'm still more excited about winning a task uh so far yeah it's fun it's a lot of fun jp

keep the mic um can you regale us with uh the the the the comp story that comes to mind it could be the most exciting or the most crazy or it doesn't have to be you either it could be something you saw so

yeah i've been in many many camps i have had many stories i remember that

i was talking to calvo by the time it was calvo was the mid-director and i i was announcing all these pilots through reserve and etc and the funny thing is next morning he explained to the people at the meeting yeah robert announced many reserve and the last one was himself under the reserve was calling me and saying oh calvo i'm under the reserve so there were that day there were seven reserves on the same day on the same day we've had some sad stories i was in piedraita with my 2011 and then my kids asking me why i do are you doing that sport i say why are you asking the question well you could die and then yeah you have this kind of um of uh feelings uh we we did this epic flight in chelan which i was lucky enough to be first on uh on goal when we did it the 224 k's it was super funny uh yeah so i would say that uh

it's it's real adventure uh flying comps is uh meeting people is also uh living incredibly incredible stories when you land you have so many images in your head so many things to say that's it's it's just impossible to share with anybody but pilots and uh i have very often the feeling that when i end up a comp i come back home with a real full adventure and so yeah it made my uh my day or my holidays cool

jimmy before you tell yours i'll uh were any of you guys at the Superfinal with the fire flying in columbia in 2000 it was 2012 but it was 2013 so we were i don't remember what day it was but it was the it was my first year of comps and i got quite lucky because the PWC was in sun valley that year and and i got really lucky there and i got really lucky and i got really lucky so i made it the Superfinal and uh and i was just getting trashed at the Superfinal it was very humbling but uh the uh we had the they they light the sugar cane on fire and rolled the neo those of you been there you've seen all these and uh some of them can get really big and these huge columns and it was quite a stable slow day and the lead gaggle was was trying very hard to get into goal and they and Chrigel was there and yasin and uh and a few of them flew into the column and uh and Chrigel later posted his his instrument and it was a 20 meter climb and yasin went in to this thing like 50 feet off the ground so Chrigel went in way high and just Chrigel that he went in lost his glider full stalled got his glider back lost his glider again full stalled matt beecher was just circling on the outside of this column and he was that black it was just a column of black and farmer was like i'm not going in there and he just watched just one guy after another go into this thing it just explode but yasin went in right off the ground and it took him 2 000 feet above the top of the column like just straight up his glider exploded right away he never got it back together it twisted up like a rope he said he definitely had like more than 20 twists it was literally just a rope over his head and uh and he went to throw his reserve and he thought oh no no i can't throw it yet because i'll land in the fire so he went two thousand he just rode it all the way to the top and came out the top of the thing and went oh okay now i can throw

anyway that was my favorite cop story but do you have a favorite favorite cop story just

one thing to add uh they generate cumulus so we have them pyro cumulus totally yeah this this one was big yeah this one was

big it wasn't a little one and luke armand got up the next day and uh and gave a very heartfelt i don't want to ever see anybody do that again no it was really dangerous in the

comp i think it was next year there was uh a paramotor circling the fires to prevent us to go inside really yeah yeah wow

they set up safety yeah

yeah there was a new new setup jimmy you got a favorite comp story yeah it's it's more like a like experience you know like when you start the sport you kind of this dream of doing something amazing and stuff but you know to be serious you know like this is like esp and ocho stuff you know like not to not to make fun of the sport or anything but it's just like it's such a new growing sport i kind of describe this as like the sport that

i've been doing for a long time

and i think it's

just like the sport that i've been doing for a long time and i think it's just kind of reminds

me of like in the 70s you know where guys are loading up their motosox and bands and just kind of vagabonding and just trying their hearts out and there's no money involved people really do this for their passion and they just truly love the sport that's what i really like about this sport you know that's what really kind of drives me and you just get to see people from around the world and get to visit them and stuff i mean to me that's kind of the the neatest thing i mean winning a task is great you know winning a comp is good but i think just kind of hanging out friends it's probably like the favorite parts for me so i always say people with the most fun wins the wins the comp right you know even though you could be doing shitty if you're still having the best fun well in terms of stories uh have many stories like the fire ones in brazil also you know there's a lot of fires in brazil and last time uh in the PWC there there was a one of these huge combs and all the guys were going in and i said no i'm not going to go in there it's just ugly and of course i mean the day turned bad for me because the guys went super high and i had to scratch all the way to the to the goal and they made it before me so that's a bad story for me yeah but i guess uh stories about comp comps are all you know just raising and all the flying part is pretty much the same except with different touch-ups but the good stories are behind the comps the days you don't fly which many can be told many cannot be told those are the best uh stories uh i need a lot of time to tell them but uh there's many

all right well we'll save it for another show um before we close do you guys have any last bit of advice for the audience anything you know the the the many people who listen that are maybe thinking about doing their first comp or maybe thinking about taking their first trip to valle or roldanillo this winter or here or chile um you know just any kind of advice for them or what they should be thinking about well

the first advice is go as a as a learning process so don't think you're going to win the comp that that makes it safer uh second is uh yeah just go to comps the way i started is i thought hey i can go fly cross country and i have somebody to retrieve me and have all the safety around me and everything and experienced pilots just taking me by the hand to long places long long flights so my advice is just just be as a student to the first comps but go go to comps if you can

i would uh push it even further in your direction uh keep your glider don't buy a comp glider for your first comp yeah yeah yeah of course so just make it with your glider uh learn to fly so you should change from to another glider once you really push the bar a hundred percent and you feel comfortable with that then you can change the glider else you don't use your glider enough so you just keep it and of course it's frustrating uh you see those comp gliders flying and literally you know leaving you but uh that's part of the game so i would also recommend people to enjoy and so just remove the pressure and try to make go as much as you can and as we all said safety first so don't put yourself into trouble uh and don't try to beat the lead gaggle when you when you're doing your first comp doesn't work there

there's a good thing you hinted on there though that i've been taking care of and i think it's really important to keep in mind that you know the the two liners these days let's use the xeno as an example because it's been a huge hit and tons of people are flying it um i think there's a lot of hidden risk there because it's it it's a it's a super solid glider the two liners these days are amazing gliders they're really solid and i think they they give people a lot of uh false confidence yeah

uh you made a point uh i would recommend any comp pilot to do SIV before his first comp that's very important uh go go to a lake whatever uh find a school and have a reliable uh teacher or uh and and do SIV it's very very important to know how to recover from different situations and also to learn about your glider and to have the feeling of the glide of your glider uh that's super important yeah

i'm glad you said that too because i think people get a new respect for big spanny gliders when they start stalling them and doing weird stuff to them and they're it's not like learning how to stall a no i

i come from a flat country in belgium it's very flat so people used to buy big boys gliders and we had this uh championship in switzerland half of the people wouldn't take off because they were frightened by the conditions and i respect that i totally respect it and that was i think a good decision but it's a bit sad also because if they came with their own glider

they wouldn't be able to do it and they wouldn't be able to do it and they wouldn't

be able

to do it and they

would have uh or uh more you know adapted glider they would have flown for sure and it was a nice day uh to fly so yeah uh sometimes you fly your own uh takeoff and sight and you feel confident and but just go try your glider in the alps or in some rough mountains and then you'll see okay maybe i should practice more before changing my glider i had one person it's it's very uh i have very often a person coming to me oh look i'm willing to buy as you know or i'm willing to buy a flow or whatever and i'm really trying to cool them a bit but i have to say i have to admit one thing though is it's also a matter of feeling so i started to fly

comp gliders quite quite early in my career because i've felt more confident under it so but it's the behavior of the glider versus the pilot so it's not only a matter of skills but something that you know there is a interaction between you and your glider and if you have a good fit then why not but you have to know that you have to remember remain and stay humble below the glider i've never seen a glider failed i've always seen pilots failing sure yeah i want to add to that too i think it's very important to kind of start with a slower glider and then you have to be more confident and you have to be more confident you could have just as much fun you know it's it's just a funny feeling when you get this glider you get a good start you're crossing the valley you know you're just smashing bar i just remember the time that you know the rat race me and kiwis crossing the the apple gay valley and just thinking that we were doing this you know at the start and next you know like five seconds later you know these big boys gliders the skinny ninja wings are flying over us but that's kind of cool because as you have as much fun as you can with these wings and you gain experience and respect for wings um you kind of look back now and laugh at these experiences and how much fun you had and then of course flying these wings you're going to make tons of mistakes and know your limits and stuff but that's how you learn you have to make mistakes if you just go out there and do the best you never learn the basic you didn't really set a strong foundation at first and i truly believe that you have to spend a lot of time flying spend a lot of time developing that process and then getting into a system and working your way up to a you know those tiny little skinny

wings that everybody wants to fly but yeah

i mean look at some of the guys here i mean there's a there was a guy in an arctic today that was just crushing it out there you know i mean it's awesome and that's got to be a really good feeling that's a good point

to make like yet last year we went to the canadian nationals in um pemberton and these deltas were keeping up with the the enzo threes because we can't push as far or close to the cliff these guys could just full bar to the

was really taken away you know it's actually better flies you know in the in the delta yeah that point you know

last year at the monarca marco i mean he's a very talented great comp pilot but he won it on the queen you know he won it on a sea glider he beat everybody on the enzos and because he could just he mashed bar through all the convergence we were always coming off like oh god trying to deal and he just kept going yeah it was pretty cool well

i stayed in the previous conversation i lost my mind for a bit but uh what i wanted to add to the previous conversation was uh don't try to beat your next guy the guy next to you so the first time you go to a comp just go as a learner again and uh don't try to beat the guy next to you because it doesn't change anything in the results to win a comp it requires a full week of good flying so when you're flying next to a guy and you're like ah i want to beat this guy next to me you don't even probably don't even know who he is but at that moment you just want to beat whoever is around you that's a huge mistake everybody makes especially in the beginnings and that's when you when you get yourself into trouble when you push it more than you need it just to beat the guy next to you and that's not going to change anything in the comp result

super so just

uh you know keep in mind that to win a comp it takes seven full really good flying days from you uh so most likely in the beginning it's not because you don't have experience so just go to a comp to enjoy every single flight not winning against your buddy next to you just use your body be the be a buddy to him and fly with him that's when that's what it's going to take you to go and i'm still mad at you yes i don't

i don't forgive you so disappointed guys great thank you so much i appreciate it and listeners i hope you enjoyed that and uh let's go get some chow all right thank you guys thanks guys i

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