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Thanks for watching! out of this cupboard and what had happened was we were taking on water and that was getting to the batteries and then and then i remembered i'd done my sea survival course but i couldn't remember which fire extinguisher you're supposed to use for electrics i was like wait is this the right fire extinguisher but in the end we solved it because we we tacked so we were healing quite quite quite over so we were on one side and so by by changing direction changing our direction against the wind we're able to lift the other side out of the water so meanwhile also
didn't 100 boats or something cancel before yeah going or something yeah
82 boats pulled out that night yeah so so i mean
isn't this was this the most comparable race to the famous one i mean there's legend stories it wasn't at 79 the fast net where they had all the boats go down yeah
i mean that right fast it's a little bit like um you know the north face of the eye girl that you know it's got a kind of legendary cult status partly because of this this terrible tragedy that happened in in 1979 where uh i think 20 or so um sailors died i mean um but things have everything has changed so much since since then i mean you know back then they had you know some boats didn't even have any communications equipment they just had a long wave radio at best you know a weather forecast was was something you got once every 12 hours um and uh you know the the the kind of rescue your lifeboat that you got into was wasn't much better than a kind of kid's rubber dinghy um now you know yeah everything's so much so so much more advanced now you know technology the weather forecasting is so much better um i mean it's now mandatory that you have to do a sea survival course um so you actually have to learn um you know how to how to get into one of these life rafts and the one thing that you learn on that is that you you step up into your life raft in other words you get into it the very very last minute when your boat you stay on your boat as long as possible as long as it's floating you stay on your boat as long as it's floating you stay on your boat as long as it's stay on it and you're only getting that life raft when when when it's the only option yeah
you don't you don't you don't want to leave where you got all your food and all your stuff and the water maker and you know all the yeah boats even when sinking are better than a life raft life raft is last ditch it's like our reserve isn't it you know yeah but uh
it was a fun it was a wild wild adventure but
i bet and you've been into sailing for a while or is this uh is this a passion not
really this was a classic kind of conversation with my neighbor and and uh i sort of mentioned that i was into sailing and he sort of said oh great i'm i need crew so i kind of i kind of be winging it slightly yeah yeah yeah yeah i kind of winging it a little bit um but no it's all good all good and you guys finished yeah we finished yeah it went well we did um pretty okay in our class you know we weren't out to win yeah um and what's amazing you know after this massive you know storm big big sort of four or five meter swells two days later we were in the middle of the irish sea and it was flat calm absolutely flat calm um and of course at that point you're praying for wind and then you know the phrase you know be careful what you wish for because another storm rolled through uh so uh yeah it was it was it was an exciting time but i was glad to glad to make it on to to terra firma actually when i got off the boat
oh i'm sure yeah fires are never fun and uh storms are aren't fun you know it's interesting the all the sailing i've done you know i've been around the world twice you get more i i was a lot less worried about storms early on i became i i got more and more and more humble and more and more and more afraid as time went on which is the opposite of say paraglider or something as you know as you get more experience you get better it all becomes more manageable and with sailing i just got more and more scared all the time of the of the seas because when you start fighting in the beginning it's novel ah this is a storm i've read the books and you know it's kind of this fight to survive and and as time goes on even with like you're talking about gps you know when i back when i got into the day it was you know when i worked on fishing boats up in alaska in my late teens it was all lorraine we didn't have gps my my captain lost a ship the year before i got up there in the in the bering sea and it was still no joke but you know i anyway the the storms are just they're just they're just they're just they're just they're just they're just they're just they're just they're just they're just they're just they're just they're just they're just scary and and you feel very very very small at sea regardless of the boat you're on and yeah it just i just got more intimidated of course i got more experience and so i knew how to deal with it better and how to reef and how to understand and basically not go out there if i could if something was coming rather than yeah let's go out and battle this storm but you know sometimes you still just get caught out the funny thing about sailing is it's way harder
to do something like the fast net when you're coastal it's it's the same as paragliding the weather changes constantly and really fast and sometimes really violently whereas when you're being offshore is is way more cruisy typically if you're if you're doing it right and you're going in the right season you've got the current working with you and the wind working with you and the only nightmare really is a squall and they're very brief and very fast and so it's really more you know circumnavigating new zealand and you know you're not going to be able to do anything and you're not going to be able to do anything and you're not going to be able to do anything or circumnavigating ireland or going around and in the english channel that's much more difficult because you've got traffic and storms and things change really fast and it's much more demanding sailing than being offshore and being offshore is actually pretty easy yeah
i mean that's a big thing in the in the channel it's a major shipping lane and you're seeing these these huge tankers and you're looking at the the green light and the red light and you're trying to think trying to remember which which one means it's gone past me you know and the you know eyes play tricks with you and um but it's quite funny when when we finished the race we had a little bit of a penalty because the um the coast guard had tried to get a hold of us during the race and our radio wasn't working and we um the reason for that is someone's ais device there you know emergency thing was was going off we didn't realize it um and so we got our knuckles wrapped the coast guard while i was trying to put out the fire were also trying to call us and i tried to get back to them and say you know um all's well but um they couldn't hear me so um we got out of contact um but in the end it was okay but it reminded me of of during the rebel ex-ops when when kinga got her her yellow card for being out of contact so uh that that amused me a lot yeah for yeah she was quite upset about
that too i didn't realize that until kind of after but she's you know sounds like she had a good night and kind of bivvied and but yeah i think on the show but yeah i
think something got lost in translation on that one um i don't
know if i'm
really know exactly you know what happened but uh but you know she was just out there i had i spoke to her the other day she just had a really great adventure and and um i think uh yeah just just went off grid for a little bit well
it's good it's good timing that we're talking because the film just came out which i enjoyed it was done quite a bit differently than in the past i mean it still really mostly showed the leaders which is always you know it's always tricky just who are you going to show and uh but the i like the talking heads i like the explanation and that's really what we were trying to do i was so thankful that you put me on the team this year and the feedback i got from the fans were that this is great now we understand what's going on and uh you know we're going to pair this i think into future editions in 2025 what a lot of people were telling me is they they want to know why tarquin is in this position why gavin is this position what what's what's going on and it was it was interesting i'm sure way more frantic than in past episodes because you know i don't know about you but i was driving all night every night it was it was impossible to keep up with these guys and and girls and it was just frantic it was yeah i thought the race was really frantic i have experience with that but god it's frantic what we do as well and i'm sure that was driven a lot by the just the speed of things this year but i think next time we'll have to almost have a side show of what we're doing because i you know i'm not going to be able to do it all at once you know it was we would just pop up and we'd be in tracy may or we'd pop up and and be at one of the at the turn points people why are you there what are you doing there what's going on yeah
that there would be a lot of swearing in uh in my van
you know what where am i going to go do now you know and and sometimes going taking a wrong turn and i'd end up completely in the wrong direction i mean you had this great idea gavin that yeah we should have a little uh gps unit on us so that the fans can see where we are
like yeah maybe because like my worst during during the last race uh i think it was after uh lermus where we plugged it in for the you know into the google into the sat nav and i planned to go into the alberg valley to to follow the next phase of the race but um in the end i kind of then buried myself in the laptop to try and follow the stuff and then we ended up driving into the the autobahn route the long way around via you know into um uh you know burn yeah exactly yeah basically on the we were on the on the highway and then suddenly i realized i got to go live and then i'm i'm in the middle of some random farmer's field trying to make it look as hilly as possible just like which is completely in the wrong place but you know that happens from time there's a lot
of that isn't there i mean there were there was a there was a time on the cold petit saint bernard you know i was up there most of the day uh Paul Guschlbauer got in the night before that was you know right after damien lacaze had his epic flight around denta ocean i made it all the way around in one go and the next day i basically spent the day there just capturing the athletes coming in and leaving and tom de dorladeau was one of the last in that day i think he was 16th at the time and but he was having a heck of a race he was in really good spirits and because i could see that he was probably going to be the last one in he was really racing to get in and you know i mean i mean i mean i mean i mean i mean i mean i mean i mean i mean i mean i mean i get up off the hill and he said well hey where'd everybody else go and i said well everybody else went you know this aspect which was i guess to the west but you know then it was late in the day so it was it was where they were taking off earlier in the day to get the east aspect sun and so but he said well i'm going to go there that's the fastest one and as we were hiking up together i thought i don't know if this is going to work you know that the sun's really the other angle now but we were committed at that point and so we launched and immediately it looked like we were just going to land literally back where he'd started it was we were barely going to make the coal because it's quite flat up there for quite a long ways we sort of starts diving down to the aosta valley and and but we both saved it you know i was above him and filming him and i was live and oh this is amazing this is amazing but i was doing the live facebook thing and i had to be live with you at 5 p.m you know that's that was our daily deal and for the evening show and so you know we're digging out and it's rowdy and it's lee side and and i'm you know i'm with tom and i'm not not helping him but i know he's happy to have another pilot in the air because it was really quite rowdy and we were really low i mean we just had to kind of kept squirting off the pass to get to where we'd have more terrain to work and we finally got to the bottom where there's the intersection of the aosta and the stuff going up towards you know the dufour spits and mona rosa and all that and and we're digging out and i'm looking at my watch going i gotta be on the ground i gotta be on the ground i could i gotta do a show with with tarquin i can't be doing this i can't just be flying it it's just it's so funny how often that happens where you're just oh no i have to land and do a show oh but i want to fly i'm
scabbing quite
an hysterical bouncing around so
just rewind a bit i mean what were your perceptions going into the race you must have had like a preconceived idea of how the race was was done and what what what kind of changed in your mind was it what you know what was it like on the other side well
one it was really it was a lot of fun i you know i mean i have to be honest i think the athletes often have a view of the race organization that's maybe not totally positive i guess i should say you know there's there's just there's a lot of marketing and there's the there's the sponsorship and there's there's all the things that make the race go and as an athlete we all understand that we all understand that you have to have all that to make such a big operation operate right but you know i think there's often a viewpoint that there's just too much emphasis on the the marketing side and the the the filming side and the cameras and all the things and working from the other side it gave me
i i love the whole race even more i guess it's you know the to see how hard everybody on now this side you know now that i'm on the the zoom side of the race is working and how much they care and how much passion there is and and how it's going to change the race and how it's going to change the how fucking hard it is. It's just, it's hard. There's, I was amazed with how hard it was. And, and, and again, I guess a lot of that's maybe the pace, but I don't, I don't know, maybe that doesn't back off. I mean, I, you know, the easy out would just be, okay, I'm not going to race off to that. I'm just going to cover what we, you know, what I'm here doing, but nobody does that from the zoom side. Everybody's just, we got to get more, we got to work, we got to get it. There's all this exciting stuff going on.
And so it was, it was very eyeopening for me. And yeah, like I said, it just makes me love the race even more. It was, you know, it was very cool to be part of the, the talks before the race even started, you know, how is this going to work and how are we going to handle the safety and how are we going to handle the communications? And I guess I knew already that it was complicated and it was big, and it was a lot of moving parts, but I didn't really understand the depth of it and how, how really, truly complicated it is. You know, they always say I used to work in media for NBC and we covered this big golf race in Tahoe every year. And they always, this sounds crazy, but apparently from a media perspective, golf is one of the hardest things to cover because there's 18 holes.
There's a ton of different cameras and color. In other words, you and I are, we're going to be doing a lot of different things. And so I'm going to be doing a lot of the squawk box into our ear while we're trying to go live and talk, you know, so that's Esteban for you and I is 18 different, you know, there's all these different cameras and there's all these different things and they're trying to make it look very natural. And the guy running the camera, you know, okay, we're going to go to green, we're going to purple, we're going to find camera number five, you know, the live show. So Esteban for us is, is one of the highest paid positions in NBC because it's so close to the camera. And so, you know, we're going to go to green, we're going to go to purple, we're going to find camera number five, you know, the live show. So that's golf. Could you imagine? I mean, so now let's take 1200 kilometers in a straight line with 32 different athletes spread all over the joint.
And, you know, it's amazing how complicated it is. So to try to keep up with all that was really fun and really hard and really complicated. And I'm just really excited. You know, I, my camera gear, all that stuff we were dealing with, you know, that was a system we learned literally. Right before the prologue. And we were, we didn't really figure it out until day seven. And so that'll be really cool to use that stuff properly and, you know, get me in the air more and report on it.
I think this, this was a real, you know, we really tried to do things differently this year. And I think much more focus on, on kind of on, on live output on the social media stuff. Also, you know, it's nice to hear your comments on the documentary. I think that's gone, gone down quite well. We've really tried to do things, you know, do things a bit, just a bit more, you know, in a new way. And, but, you know, what a lot of people think is, you know, they just, there's an assumption because it's Red Bull, there's just tons of money and we can do the hell we want. And, and actually, you know, Red Bull is effectively just the title sponsor. You know, there isn't, you know, there's not so much flexibility that, that, that you would imagine. So yeah, it's just, I think some people would be surprised. It's basically you and me and a guy back in the office trying to pull it all together.
Um, with a little bit of help from maybe one or two other people. Um, and, uh, but definitely, I think we, we've proved that, that, that it works. And I think the idea of getting you up in the air filming live, I mean, looking ahead to the future, I mean, it would be amazing if we could put live cameras on, on the athletes themselves, you know, now let's go and see where Damien is. Let's see where Chrigel is or, um, but I think this is definitely the way forward and we've proved that this is, that this works.
Yeah, I think, I think so. I mean, I, I think what we're still missing in a sense is just the weather, you know, if we could somehow have, and we capture that when I'm up in the air, but the, you know, the, there was, there was a lot of PTSD for me in this one because the four events, the four races I've done, there was always some pretty hairy weather, not so much in 2019, that was just stability and the heat and stuff. But the, you know, the, to see what those guys, we're flying in from Col du Petit St. Bernard through kind of the Italian side of the, of the Alps going through the lakes, you know, on, on the live weather cams that day, it was gusting over 60 K an hour, you know, it's just so far from recreational flying that I still don't know that we're able to show that to, to the audience, you know, to, to be in my position that day.
And flying from the Dufour Spits towards Domodossola, you know, it was just starting to ramp up and get, and that was the day I landed in the tree. And that was not because of the weather that was because wing damage, which maybe we'll talk about, but the, you know, it was really, really gnarly conditions. You know, it was, Maxime was practically in tears at the end of that day. You know, it was, and he and I talked about that after the race and Zelim say, just the ridiculous amount of, you know, exposure and risk that the, the pilots are, are taking, especially, and, but making it look really good. Damien Lacoste flew 11 hours and 20 minutes that day, you know, but it's only experienced pilots that understand that, you know, to go, to be in the air for 11, 11 hours and 20 minutes and only go 267 K says something it, you know, it's, it was brutal and, and really rowdy.
And so, you know, I, I think if, if there's some way to overlay and show some of that is I think would just, my mom wouldn't understand, but the pilots who watched the race would understand. And it's, it's funny. I it's really exciting about it.
I had a, I had a very similar conversation with, with Damien, um, uh, Lacoste just a couple of days ago. And he was talking about that. Just if there was a way to, you know, like, like it to go back to sailing in the, in the Vendee globe race, you know, you, as, as a viewer, you know, you can put the overlays on there, on the, on the weather map. So you can see exactly the storm as it's rolling in, you know, or, or to have air spaces, for example, on, on live tracking. Um, I mean, that would be an amazing feature so that you could see why, you know, you might not understand why, you know, as an athlete approached Innsbruck, why they've gone off in a really bizarre direction, you know, and, and the airspace might explain that. But, um, yeah, Damien, interestingly, he, he actually said that, you know, that big 11 hour flight, wasn't, wasn't that big a deal for him. That's not the moment that, that, that he's most proud of,
uh, it was kind of, wow. For him, it was more the case. Well, of course I was in the air for 11 hours because there weren't any turn points that day, you know, it was a big, so I just stayed flying. Um, it's not his longest flight he's ever done. I think he's done over 300 kilometers, but he, he said his, his proudest flight, I think was from the, um, uh, up towards Mont Blanc. He, he took it. Yeah. Nice into Mont Blanc. He did a, he did an interesting line that, that really worked out. But again, to go back to what you were saying about when things are getting rowdy towards the end of the race, he, he was saying he got completely pinned and, and, you know, to, to have any kind of penetration, he had to go on full bar, but then he started sinking and he was, you know, and that wasn't working out. So he'd come off the bar to, to, to climb and then get, you know, pinned again.
And, and he just said it, and a Chrigel meanwhile was just in his, this is the kind of stuff where Kregel's in his element. But in the end, Damien said that he, he came and landed and he was lucky that the wind actually was at ground level was, was, was pretty okay. But, and, and I think Maxime also landed and that was, you know, where he really had a, had a rethink about his priorities, but it does seem in those, in those situations, Chrigel just enters a different zone. He he's just, just find some just comes into his own really, doesn't he? And, and if there was a way to tell that the problem is, is if you interview Chrigel, he just sort of say, he talk about it, like, it's just a normal flight. I didn't have
to do.
Yeah. You know, it's, it was, I
mean, it was, we, we saw that, we saw that in the 2021 race too, where, you know, he and Maxime landed within feet of one another down, uh, in the Volus and, and Maxime took the Southern route and he went North and we all went, what the hell is Chrigel doing? And then the next day, you know, those were, he talks about, I don't think it was that Fernie. I mean, the Fern was just dumping. I was there going the other way into the Fiche Valley. It was just crazy. And, and for him, it's just, you know, this is, this is what you gotta do. And, you know, to, to pull these, Yeah. Leads off and get ahead, uh, of that kind of talent, just he's really in, in different stratosphere.
I mean, I've never really seen the emotion on, on Kregel's face, but I did see it that day at the end of that day, um, meeting up with his supporter, uh, who was Thomas Thomas Torilat. And he was very, very stressed. He had not had a, had a good day because, you know, he's trying to drive, he's trying to keep up with Chrigel, which on these roads, as you know, it's a nightmare. Kregel's calling up. All the time. Say what's the wind, what's the wind, what's the wind doing. And, and, and, and Thomas, at the end of the day, he was just like, no, no media, no media. I don't, I don't want anyone, you know,
Oh, good.
Uh, and he was, he was really, he was freaked out. I think at the end of that day, much more than Chrigel was. Um, yeah, but it's, it's
really the, you were asking me, you know, what, what the, some of the differences for me, what the, the really interesting was for me, just kind of inside in my, in my being. Yeah. Was the, the number of times I was standing on launch with these guys, you know, shooting and, and thinking, wow, I'm really not in their mindset. It's, you know, knowing the conditions are going to be windy today, that kind of thing. And they're just, they're not even thinking about it versus when you're not racing. I just kept thinking, I'm really grateful. I don't have to go battle this. You know, whereas if I'd been in the race, it would have been a non-issue. You'd just, you're just in that mindset and you're, you're, you're there, but I never got in that mindset.
The only time was maybe close was flying with Ellie. That was the longest flight I had in the race. I flew about 70 K with her from in the end Valley, uh, just, just outside of Innsbruck to, to the Laramos turn point. It was beautiful fly. It was great. We, it was, it got a little rowdy around, uh, around the Zugspitze cause we were, we were in the Lee. It was quite a strong north day, but yeah. She made an incredible move the night before leaving the turn point in, in Kimsey. And it was the only one, I believe of all the athletes that flew the end Valley. And she passed a ton of people that night. And then the next day it was a really good move by her team. And, and I had never flown the end Valley because of that airspace.
It always just made me really nervous. So I had always gone north and all of our, until Laramos was what everybody else did, but they had a great game plan and it really worked. And she stayed in the air and she flew really well, but that was, you know, the only time that I, when it was kind of rowdy near the Zugspitze, I thought, yeah, I'm not in the X-Alps mindset. You know, I don't like this. Whereas for her, I'm sure it was just nothing. It was nothing, but it's interesting how that you snap into it and you're, you're in it and you're fine, but yeah, I wasn't, I didn't feel that way. And that is a camera guy.
Yeah. So that's really interesting. You say that because for the first time I did my first time, I did my first ever hike and fly race a month ago. And, and I got to experience that, that mindset, even, even a little bit. So it was, um, Paul and Aaron's new, um, it's their new hike and fly race series, Wonderbird. Uh, they got one in Murano. Uh, there's one in Salzburg, uh, and this one was the one in the Stubaitau and, um, it's a really fun, great event. And it's really there for, for kind of everyday, you know, pilots like myself. Um, but there was a, there was a crossing that you had to do from one side of the, of the Valley to the other. And, uh, I was a little bit, gung ho and I was going across and I, and I came, I had a, I came to a crossroads. Either I, I saw a little patch where I could, I could land high. That was my goal was to just land as high as possible and then continue on foot or, um, I was going to bottom out.
And, um, I thought maybe I could scratch around a little bit. That's probably what a more experienced pilot would have done. And eventually patients would have paid off. I'm not a very patient person. And I knew that I w I would have just ended up, you know, on, on the Valley floor. But so, you know, what happened was this little clear, it was a clearing in a, in a forest. And, uh, I just thought, you know, fuck it. I'm going for it. And I went in and landed in there, which is something that I would never do in normal recreation flying, but like it's race mode, you know, the red mist has come down. I'm thinking, you know, someone's going to overtake me. I don't want to end up in the bottom and have to hike another 700 meters. So I was just like, hell, let's go in here. It'll be okay. And it was, you know, there was branches everywhere. There were tree strumps. It was really not an ideal place. The land, but it was okay.
I landed bunched up, carried on the race. And that's the kind of mindset, isn't it? Of something just on a much bigger scale on the rebel X-Alps where you just, you just keep going. You just, you just launch your wing and you fly in whatever conditions there are.
Yeah. One of my favorite days of the whole race was I was up on the Nissan, uh, the morning that Chrigel came up, you know, he pulled his night pass that night before and got down into fruit again. And we all kind of thought he'd made a mistake and cause he didn't really cover much ground with the night pass. But, uh, I think that's, that's, that's a really good thing. But it ended up putting him in perfect position. Although he had to climb the Nissan where most of the other pilots just climbed up a little ways out of fruit again, and then flew up there, but watching everybody come in that day, you know, it's day God was it only three, but they'd already covered so much ground and watching just one, the tightness of the gaggle still at that point in the race. And then watching most of them at one point, Tim along, Simon over,
Toby Grocer Badger, there was one or two others. They, they landed on the top of the Nissan. I mean, it's blown 20 K. It wasn't really necessarily rowdy, you know, but stiff enough wind and it's blowing from the South side, you know, so it's, it's the opposite side that they'd come up from. So they had to kind of wing it across to the very cliff side. And, you know, the top of the Nissan is, it's not a place you land a paraglider ever. It's just rocks. And there's no, there's this tiny little flat area. And then there's the signboard and all the people, you don't land a paraglider there. And they all did. They just come in and they'd swoop in big wing overs. I mean, Tim along, he's doing helicopters. It was amazing. And, you know, but they're, they just boink right next to the signboard on the top of a 3000 foot mountain.
That's completely, it's a knife edge up there and, and sign the board, pull up their wing and take off. You know, it was, Seconds for all of them, seconds, just none of them were up there for more than a minute.
And don't forget some of the athletes didn't even bother hiking, you know, Pal Takats just walked a little bit up, launched from the, you know, the hillside, fumbled his way up and then landed. And he did that in a few places. He did it near Davos as well, you know, cause he knew that was his weakness. He couldn't keep up with the guys. So, and also people are now doing that outside of Lemus. I remember when I first, you know, followed Rebel X-Alps on the road, 2017, you know, everyone would hike, you know, do these big hour, two hour hikes all the way to the, the official launch, wherever it was to the top of the mountain. And I can't remember who it was who first did it, but it was maybe 2019 when someone just thought, you know what, just, just, just try, try launching off the ski slope. Just this grass field, just behind, you know, just like a few hundred meters up.
Yeah. Behind the sign. And Chrigel also did that as well on the tip this year, which was 2019. He did it after Davos. Yeah. He just, just launched. And that was the, that was actually one of the funniest things was, was, um, so Chrigel, you know, he's racing against the clock. And, uh, you know, some little old lady stops him and says, uh, oh, can you, can you take a selfie of me? You know, can I, can we, can I do a selfie? And she gets a phone out and she doesn't know how to do it. And she says, you know, you know, like a little old lady and Chrigel in the end, just grabs the phone,
says he takes it, gives it back to her, then carries on and then ends up, you know, it being the only person to, you know, to, uh, to land at Titlis. Um, that was quite a spe that was actually quite a special highlight for me covering the race actually to be up there and, and get him there and then, and then spend the night on, on the mountain. Um, and they kind of did a lock-in and I probably shouldn't say this, but some, not me, but, uh, some people did do a little, uh, recce of the, uh, the ski station and found some beers and a few other goodies. So we had quite a good night.
You know, there's, there's always these moments in the race where. You can go. That's where he got it. Of course, it's all the little things and they really add up, but there's, you know, that day. And I had him on the podcast about this because he had Maxime the night before leaving Laramie. Moose were five K difference one another. And he pulled a really interesting move that night too, where he's all that said they're thermaling together, huge overdevelopment, big storm. And, and, and Maxime's thinking we can't be in the air anymore. Chrigel just top lands real quick. And Maxime's going. Wow. Why would you do that right now? We could just get another 10 K and fly it out of the bottom of the Valley, which is what Maxime did. Well, Chrigel hikes up another a hundred meters, relaunches gets five K on them, you know?
And that was, and I, I'm convinced. I don't know if the Kringle said that, but I'm convinced that he, because he worked out the math for the next day. I got to get to Davos by this time in the morning. I got to get off the hill by this time to give me a chance to get to Titlis in this time. That's good. You know, he knows that, that route better than anybody, and he knows he's got to get up there by a certain time. Or it's going to be the snow storm, which it was. And, you know, so he gets Davos and. Looked at his watch. I don't have time to hike any higher. I got to make this work from down here. You know, he always talks about that sporting risk and he's the only one that pulled that off to, to top land on, on Titlis. And he won the race that day. And so none of us, none of the rest of the rest of us had to do 5,000 meters to get up there. And you know, it was, that's going to wear you out.
And he just, he saved 5,000 meters. A hundred. Hiking. And that was it. Race was over.
That reminds me of something that Aaron said. So as you know, everyone was coming up the glacier to the top of Titlis, hiking up through the snow, but not Aaron. Aaron just kind of clung to the, to the rock. And he just took a sort of direct line up this sort of rocky ridge line. And when I said to Aaron, Hey, why not hike up the snow where everyone else kind of came? And he said, snow is for skiing.
Of course. Classic. Classic. Aaron. Yeah.
Classic Aaron. And also a beast. God. He just, he was just out here for the global rescue. X red rocks, the hike and fly race. I do host and organize. And he won it last year and he came back to defend his title. And he was sick as a dog. It was just, there was green stuff coming out of his nose and his mouth. And he was really sick and he really had to fight harder this year than year one. He had some, it's a pretty good talent chasing him hard, including Peltz Hackett's. But yeah, these, these guys are animals. That the whole point of that thing with the Nissan, the Nissan was just, it was really cool to see it from that other perspective. You know, I would have been one of those guys flying up and landing hopefully at the top, like those guys did. But, you know, just to see the talent and the skill and the, you know, to watch it from the bird's eye view was, was very cool.
That was, you know, I'd never, when you're in the race, you just, you see you and you see your team and you know what you're doing, but it was very cool. It was neat homework. Homework to, to see how other teams operate. It's fascinating.
What would be Gavin's top three moves? Who most impressed you?
Tim Malongi impressed me throughout. You know, I thought that he, you know, to a, to have broken his back in January and to have that comeback. I mean, that must've been a moment where you go, I mean, I can see keeping it, you know, Paul had that injury. And going into the 20, was it the 19 race where he broke his leg? Or was it 21? Yeah. I mean, I can see keeping the race on the docket because it keeps you motivated. But I mean, to be in a clamshell and, you know, to know, okay, I'm not going to be able to train at all. Like what I was planning on training and coming in as a rookie. And I mean, he's obviously got amazing piloting skills, you know, with his acro background.
But I mean, what an incredible. Incredible comeback. And then the consistency for a rookie. Often rookies go out pretty hard. They can do well for the first few days. But they, they make too many mistakes and they just, they don't pace themselves very well often. And Tim was just consistent. I don't think he was ever out of the top 10 all the way through the race. And their team made really good decisions. And they were just, they seemed emotionally very stable. I love their strategy. I love. I love that he was having a lot of fun, which you can see in Powell. You know, Powell was having a lot of fun. Powell would be in my mind.
I loved his approach. It was radically bold, you know, from the first day when he took off Kitzbühel. That's bold to take off before you really even know if it's working, you know, to risk bombing out the first day. And, and then to leave before everybody else did. I mean, I flew with the whole gaggle almost all the way to our grind that first day. And, and it was a gaggle. I mean, everybody was together except Powell. And I didn't know he wasn't with us. It was because of what I was hearing on the radio, you know, Powell's 10K ahead. And I thought, what? That's not true. We're all together. There's Chrigel and there's Tim and there's Paul and there's Aaron. And we're all here. Paul's, that must be a mistake because I wasn't watching live.
I have tracking, but I went back and watched the replay and he was, and he kept doing it. He kept making these moves that were, you know, I, I know from being in the race that I would not have personally been able to do that because you're the risk reward is massive. And to, to leave the gaggle and to do your own thing, especially early like that. I mean, you've got the gaggle to work with and he's a really good comp pilot. He knows that that's the fast way to fly is to stay together. Yeah. And, and he just kept doing that. He kept just going for it. And I, that was really cool to see because I know how hard that is to do. It's, it's not competition flying where, you know, you bomb out, who cares?
You've just blown a day. You get to, you get to maybe make it back the next day. It's the X-Ops is, is punishing when you make mistakes. And especially when the pace is this fast as it was this year, where you can't afford to be on the ground. You know, you can't afford to be on the ground for two hours in the middle of the day. You know, that's the difference between second and 20th in this race. And so, you know, for him to just keep rolling the dice like that was awesome to see. I asked him about it. You know, we put him on stage at the X-Red Rocks and, you know, I asked him about that. And, you know, how did you get, why, where'd that come from? And I don't know that he really gave us an answer. He was just, he was just in that mindset. It was great to see.
Andy seemed like he was having the most fun. I mean, he was, he was just. He was just hollering and screaming. And you could always, you could always, you know, point Pal out because he was just, you know, he could hear him a mile off.
What was
mine? It
was cool to have,
I mean, I think his, I think his approach too was that, you know, I mean, he wasn't as fit, although he is pretty fit. He's underselling that quite a bit. But, you know, that, that whole thing, it was kind of like Aaron in the, in the race in 2019 when he said, I think at the end, he said he walked 19 kilometers on pavement the whole race. You know, he made it to Monaco. He had a really good race, but his approach was just, I'm going to take this as a pilot. I don't have the knee. I can't walk. So I have to fly this race. And so he just, he had that approach that I'm going to, I'm going to fly it. I'm going to stay in the air. And that's what Paul, Paul did, which was really cool. It's hard to do.
Yeah, no, definitely. Pal, Pal is up there. I think with the, the, the, if you were to have like a pop, an athlete of the, of this edition, I think he would definitely be up there. Yeah. Who else? I mean, anyone else? That's the interesting thing about this race is that every single athlete who took part has, will have had epic, epic moves and has got incredible stories and low saves and close calls and all these kinds of things. And, and if there's a way to try and it's always the joke, isn't it? At the end, I remember Simon O 'Brien is saying that, you know, he could write a book after every rebel ex-alps and probably every athlete could, could write a book over each edition because just, there's always, there's always so much kind of, you know, going on. I mean, Paul, Paul had that amazing day where he went from, I think he was like 12th or 13th straight up into, to fourth place.
He, he tagged five or six turn points in a day from Fiche, you know, Fiche up to, you know, and all the way to, to Col de Petit Saint Bernard. Yeah. Yeah. He came in that
night. You're right. He was back up in the top five. It was incredible. Uh, and yeah, I mean, I think the, the, the personal story. It would be so fascinating to have that. I mean, that was why John Chambers book was so fascinating for me because it's the only book that's ever been written about the ex-alps, but the it's, and it sounds like Regal maybe just put out one, but that'll be fun to read, but it's, there's so much going on. And it was, you know, I spent one of my favorite days was up at the, at the hut at the Cimitosa turn point, which was really nostalgic for me because that was a turn point in 2015. And. For me, and it was, I got to see a whole, but I got there just as Paul was launching and climbing out. And, and so everybody else, so me, Hal and, uh, Rito and that whole gaggle that had left the do for spits the day before Tom, the door, the dough.
And it was, it was really cool to see them come through. It was also just interesting to see, gosh, these guys are in 15th, 16th place, 17th place that are. The last year they were in the top six and, but they were only. In some cases, minutes behind at that point in the race, which is a lot, you know, if they've only got a couple more days to go only minutes behind fifth place. It was just, it was remarkable to see how tight it was and how little mistakes, you know, me, how launched from the Cimitosa that night, he had to run up the, the wrong way. It started getting catapulted. And I think it was a little bit dramatic. It's the wrong time of day. It was three o 'clock in the afternoon.
It should have been really pumping up from the West and coming in and everything reversed. In fact, uh, Nikola and who was with him Rito. I think, you know, there's that little church kind of thing up above the, above, above the, uh, hut there above the refugio and they had to launch. The wind was coming down the Canyon. This is hard to describe unless you've been up in there, but it's coming completely the wrong way. And so they've got a launch going.
We're done here. We're done here. We're done here. We're done here. We're done here.
We're done here. We're done here. We're done here. We're done here.
We're done here. We're done here. We're done here. We're done here. We're done here. We're done here. We're done here. We're done here. We're done here. We're done here. We're done here. We're done here. We're done here. We're done here. We're done here. We're done here. We're done here. We're done here. We're done here. We're done here. this cliff and you know with it just didn't look like it was going to work it looked like this was going to be katabatic all the way to the ground and luckily he was able you know as soon and it was like you know as soon as he lost he's just getting pummeled down and then eventually the the correct wind came in and you know that kind of stuff is just what's happening here you know no no forecast is predicting it you wouldn't see it it's way too early in the day to be katabatic there's not ice and snow above us so where's this coming from and and you know these guys have to deal with that constantly but anyway he got up high and went on glide and apparently you know took a bad line and it was 10 spots you know in his eventual ranking it was 10 spots from where he bent you know that just the tiniest of little mistakes and oh what a penalty
so gavin a question i've been meaning to ask you since the end of the race is what's the most important thing for you to do in the race is what happened with the tree you mentioned it earlier but what what really happened that day
you know i've had i've had a lot of hairy experiences in the in the ex-alps but this was probably the worst actually it was so bizarre so i i hyped up over in the snow to get up to this crazy cool position right underneath the the turn point at the dew force spit so we were just outside of the cylinder and i caught uh rito and nicola launching and the video was incredible it was beautiful they had to do this kind of forward launch and run on flat snow and then there was this totally vertical cliff about 400 you know 150 meter cliff 400 foot absolutely vertical cliff and you know their wing was up and then they launched and and you know they they did it perfectly and i'm supposed to go live at nine so this was about eight o 'clock you were live and the the service up there was terrible and i'm running around trying to find better than one bar and i'm running around trying to find better than one bar and as you know my camera setup is was basically this arm that was about a foot and a half long with the iphone out at the end of it and it wasn't really fold awayable so i had a bunch of trouble with this actually in the the first day at kidsbule i blew a launch because it would you really had to be careful doing a reverse launch because it's sticking out in front of your gear and when you turn to go into launch position it would if you weren't paying attention to it it could wrap up in the opposite riser and so we were able to do that and i'm sure you guys are going to be able to now i have all this sorted but at the time i was still kind of dealing with how to do this but i'm i'm hurrying because i really want to be in the air for the nine o 'clock show and i'm right and i can still see these guys they're right there and i want to get in the air because i can potentially fly with them for a whole bunch of kilometers towards the next turn point and into the lakes district and all that stuff and so i'm kind of rushing but soon enough i realized like okay i'm not going to be able to go live i don't have the coverage so i've i've texted the team listen i'm just going to go live and i'm going to be able to go live and i'm going to be able to go live and i'm just going to record i'll use the gopro on my helmet i'll use the iphone on my hip and i'll just record but the live's not going to work there's there was no service back in there and tarquin it was a class one launch at that point i didn't have to do the whole run and forward thing the at the top of the lift there was this flat area and there was this very gentle
it was ice and snow but it wasn't that slippery and it was it was very gradual and there's nice air coming up perfectly it wasn't cross wind it wasn't too strong it was just i could just pull the wing up check everything turn fly off so the cliff now i don't have to run off the cliff the cliff is to my left side and my ditch in other words my if something goes wrong i've got a nice ditch to the right you know so this this snow field is all flat to my right so i pull the wing up and the first time doesn't work out and i put it back down and the wind is just coming in perfectly so i pull the wing up and i put it back down and the wind is just coming in perfectly so i pull the wing up up again check everything looks great turn and now i'm kind of and it's only about 20 feet before the cliff and and i've you know i'm doing my you know shoulders nice down i'm i'm doing a nice kind of torpedo launch and as soon as i get airborne it's pulling me hard to the left and i'm going and i'm going whoa whoa whoa and i'm i'm hitting to the right so i know i've got something wrong in my left wing so i slam the brakes which makes me pull harder that way and i'm going to the and now i don't have my ditch my ditch is to the right and my i'm flying hard to the left and i look up and uh-oh and there's something and i don't i don't notice that it's actually down in front of me it's my the camera is through the risers on the left side and so it's got that side of the wing all messed up but i'm flying and my my it's pulling me into this cliff wall and it's 400 like i said it's 400 feet totally vertical i don't have i can't spin it and get back to the side of the wing and i'm flying and i'm flying and i'm pulling me into this cliff i can't fly to the right it's pulling me and so i've already got as much right brake as i can possibly have without spinning the glider to just fly sort of straight but i'm flying into this cliff and right before i hit the cliff i just think oh no and i crack the right brake and it's just enough to kind of move me enough away from the cliff that i don't splat directly into it but the cliff tears my stabilo right out of the wing so the the wing hits the cliff and the stabilo line just pulls right out of it and it's just hanging down below but that gives me that's kind of released a lot of the pull of the wing so at least now with a lot of right brake i can fly straight and real what's going on here and i mean it was
really close to just pummeling down this cliff it was as close as i've ever come to really really sketchy outcome and so but now i'm flying straight the wing is just kind of you know that side of the wing has no stabilo so the wing is just kind of but but but but it's not cravatted it's okay and i see my my camera gears in here so i can start pulling all that out of the riser and in doing so i break the end of the camera unit so i can't use that phone i just put it in my pocket and uh and think okay i'll just go land and but then i realized actually the wing is flyable it's not great but it's still it's just soft on that side and i'm just so it's hard to turn to the left it it makes thermaling to the right weird but i'm safe the the wing is the wing is flyable and so then i think okay well i'm gonna fly my driver was driving around to domodossola so he's down in the aosta valley he's driving around a domodossola domodossola's 40k the conditions are really good and i think okay i'll just i'll fly to domodossola i'll land there maybe i can catch up with these guys i couldn't see them anymore but maybe i'll
and so i start flying and it's not great but it's okay and i get to the ridge above the macagnaga valley so mono rose is up on my right i'm well past the dew force fits now and it's really turning on it's 11 o 'clock in the morning now and it's it's gangbusters and there's quite a bit of north wind and so as i'm flying along the ridge down into the macagnaga valley and i had this really interesting experience there in the 2021 race that's where where uh bramfitt did you pummeled his leg he had that terrible landing there and i had a really interesting really fun i didn't have a bad experience there but it was really fun that was my last night of the race in 2021 so you know i'm kind of nostalgic and and uh still thinking i can maybe catch these guys but now it's really on and now i'm not enjoying flying this wing nearly as much and i think okay
forget it i'm not going to make it into the domodossola valley i should just go land there was a valley off to my right that was one of the feeders down to the aosta and so i call my my support my supporter my driver this guy jack and say hey you know don't go around the corner start coming up this valley i'll send you a pen uh but i'm gonna i'm gonna try to land down here and you know i'm kind of thermaling and i'm getting down and i get to this area where a beginner pilot could have landed a wing it just was you know it was quite a tight valley but there's big fields and no problem but i'm it's you know a little X-Alps mode i think oh
as far as i can because that's going to make it a shorter drive for jack and i can get going faster and go chase these guys and so i'm but there's it's super narrow valley and it's all tree i've never been in this i've never flown in this area and i'm looking at my maps and going oh that's probably 20k to get to a place where this looks like it's not such a windy road and there might be a landing but you learn in the X-Alps that there's always a landing there's always a place you can put it down so i just keep pressing and now the wind is getting stronger i'm basically flying into a venturi and the wind is getting stronger and stronger and stronger and so i'm i'm my glide's getting worse and worse and worse and it's all trees it's just a river and trees and yeah okay i don't need to why what am i doing i should go land in a field and so i turn around and start flying downwind and i'm covering ground really fast but i'm not going to make it back to where these good fields it's a very steep canyon and so i'm looking around a little bit desperately to find a decent you landing and there's one place that's there's all this kind of a village that's up on a hill that's got all these tiers with a lot of rock walls and a lot of power lines and in an X-Alps mode yeah that's that's a landing but i don't know that that's not great but while i'm flying over that just back down the canyon you know lower is a field that looks pretty good it looks quite steep but it looks pretty good okay that's my lz so i fly back down you know back into the wind and towards that and as i get in there i had completely misjudged it the the decent looking field is
a 45 degree slope it's really steep and it's grass it's nice but it's really street steep and it's facing away from the road so the road's at the top of that and it's steep like that and the it's surrounded by huge trees really really big tall trees and no problem all i've got to do is do a big wing over and a big wing over and i'm going to do a big wing over and i'm going to do a big wing over and let the let the let the wing go and fly up this hill do the fly on the wall thing you're seeing maxime and patrick von kindle and Chrigel do all the time and i've practiced this a lot i've got that move it's fine so i do a big wing over to the right and i go to do the big wing over to the left and i have completely forgotten that i don't have a left wing i don't have any authority on that side whatsoever i mean this whole flying down the canyon i'm completely
my my my bandwidth taken up by finding an lz and landing safely and i forget that i've got a completely crippled wing so i do this huge wing over to the right which of course is going to give a lot of power and energy to the wing as i come down through the pendulum and come up to the other side and i've got to have authority to bring that back now and do the whole fly on the wall bit and i go to hit the left brake and lean and there's nothing there i'm flying dead straight and right in front of me is this huge tree it is about 80 feet off the ground and i don't even i don't have it chance at doing anything else i'm not going to stall the wing because then i'm just going to hit the deck and so my only hope then is oh i hope this tree grabs me i hope that the wing hangs in the tree and luckily i had the momentum as i'm kind of coming down through the pendulum for the wing to get in the tree and and i just pendulum through the bottom i don't i don't hit anything but the tree the tree makes a terrible sound with the wing so obviously i've done some damage to the wing but i pendulum through and it was so lucky i pendulum back and i'm not going to back the other way think oh no no the wing holds and as i pendulum through i kind of turn around and there's another tree that's about 50 feet up and i'm and i'm able to grab the top of that that's literally just you know the the cartoon character that grabs at the top of a tree and it just sways back all over the place and i'm in the very top of this thing and just woo and you know do this whole row the tree kind of bends all the way down and comes back it's you know being on the end of a bungee cord type of deal and and eventually it it it kind of solidifies out and i'm fine harness is fine wings up in the tree and i call 112 you know our version of 911 in europe and immediately get this very nice lady on the call and you know tell her the situation and hey i think i'm going to need a tree kit you know or somebody to come help me out of this tree and that is hysterical because they don't speak english and they put me on hold and this all takes 15 minutes and while this is happening i've got her on speakerphone while this is happening i start getting out of my jacket and throwing it down and taking off my much like my helmet on but take off my buff because it's really hot it's and i'm sweating profusely and i'm kind of assessing the whole situation and i'm barely able to stay in the tree because the my wing is the the riser on one side especially it's really tight and so i can't get out of the harness and and they're telling me you know don't move we need to come to the to you.
Don't try to be a hero. Don't try to climb down. And I'm going, yeah, but I'm hot. And this is really uncomfortable because I'm hanging in the harness weird. And long story short, they, I was able to hang up the phone eventually. And they said, you know, emergency services are coming. And I'm talking to Jack, my driver, and I've given him the pin and told him what's going on. And it takes a long time, but eventually I'm able to kind of get enough slack on the harness to unclip the one side. And I'm thinking, oh, I don't know if this is a safe thing to do because, you know, I'm in this tree, way off the ground still. I mean, you know, if I fall, I'm in trouble, but the tree doesn't feel very stable and I'm afraid it's my, may break the top of it off or something. But anyway, I was able to get the harness off, throw the harness down, you know, basically unclip it from the wing, throw the harness down to the ground.
And eventually I'm able to climb down out of the tree on my own. And the rest of the day was pretty hysterical. We waited for this Italian, the emergency services eventually do come. And they're adamant that I got to go to the hospital. There's no way I can be okay. And I know, listen, I'm totally fine. And so they put me in the ambulance and they do, you know, a blood, I don't think they did a blood draw, but they did, you know, they did the whole blood pressure thing on me. And she said, wow, your blood pressure is perfect. It should be much higher because you should have adrenaline and be, oh no, you don't know me. I go through this stuff all the time. This is just another day of, this is just another day of Gavin. I'm totally, it was like 120 over 80 years. And so, so they signed me off and it's all fine.
I had to sign a bunch of paperwork that they could leave and they leave and a, and a proper tree guy comes, he really knew what he was doing. And he goes to the top of this 80 foot tree and starts cutting stuff out and everything else. And then eventually I get my wing, but we're there all day. And I think I did another report with you at one point, I went down, I found good internet in another little village, you know, halfway down the road or 30 minutes down the road and did a, did a show and it all worked out. And I was quite sheepish about the whole thing, you know, so I didn't, I didn't want the organization to know, cause I didn't want them to know about, you know, I didn't want them to worry about me, but everything was fine. I was given another wing by a Nivea dealer the next day. And I was able to get to the Tracy May and tie in with Ellie when she came through and, and fly with her basically all the way to the raft. So it was, it was a little hiccup, but it was, I was happy with how it worked out.
It was actually really scary. It was, it was not a nice situation. And, you know, now I have all the gear now that my, my, my kit this time will be a lot tighter for, for fly. It'll be much easier to deal with.
Yeah. Wow. What a, what a story, Gavin. I mean, I remember you saying something that, that day, you know, or you'd had a little bit of an Epic, um, you'd had a little bit of a situation with a tree and I was like, can you still make the life? You know, that's the only thing I cared about. Cause I was in my own, my own world of battling stuff. And you were like, yeah, I can make the life. We're on the line. Okay. Right. What are our, what are our top three stories? Let's go, you know, Chrigel the lead or whatever, but you know, Ellie's here. We'll talk about the tree later. Wow. I mean, yeah, that's, that's, uh, but that's always the big fear, isn't it? With, with, with anything to do with filming. I mean, I lost a friend, um, last year is he was a, um, a paramotoring filmer and he, he died in a, in a mid air is called, uh, Dan Burton is great guy and people, it's so dangerous.
If you, if you've got any kind of camera equipment, that's, that's so often the times when people get hurt. Yeah. You
have to be, you have to be really careful about it. I mean, it's, it's, I feel much, I felt pretty stupid that day. I have to be honest, you know, just, I learned from Will Gadd, my first really big film project was a Red Bull deal. You know, the very first day walking up with him to launch was just, Hey, you have to pretend. And for the next, however long this expedition is going to take, it ended up taking 18 days was just,
we're doing the stuff we're doing is dangerous enough. You have to forget that these cameras are here. Just do your thing and don't, don't do anything for the cameras. And he basically was saying, I will not do this project with you. If I see you do something for the cameras at any point, whether that's just an interview on the side of a glacier or anything, just you have to pretend that they're not here because it gives you, they help you do things that aren't, you know, you wouldn't normally do. And so you have to be, and from the filming perspective, you know, I kept telling myself going that into this race, you know, Hey, this is way better than anything we've ever gotten. And so don't risk your life. You don't have to risk your life to get footage of anybody. And, you know, so this was one of those where it was so tame.
It was such a nice launch. It was, you know, I just, none of my hackles were standing up on my back that, you know, that I was doing something risky. And so going to the next one, I'll just, I'll have really nice gear. I'll just, I'll have really nice gear. And so, you know, I kept telling myself going, Hey, this is way better than anything we've ever gotten. And so going to the next one, I'll just, I'll have really nice gear. And so going to the next one, it won't be an issue because I've done a ton of that kind of filming where it's just get off the hill, be safe, get a lot of margin, then film. It reminds me of a funny
story. I had a job a few years ago to film a, a Red Bull Ironman athlete, and I won't mention his name. I've sworn to secrecy, but I was filming him. He was, he was doing these repeats. He was on the bike and he was going up and down this hill and he was doing it like 10 times. And on the last one, he decided to do like a Superman maneuver where you, you put your arms, you know, in front and then you're on the tri bars and then your legs are kind of flat out behind you horizontal. So you're basically horizontal coming down flying. And of course he, uh, it was for the camera. He lost control and, and T-boned into the side of the road and ended up with concussion. And I don't know if you've ever dealt with a, a concussion victim. They're a nightmare. It's like, it's like someone who's really, really drunk. He keeps repeating himself, confused, where am I?
Who are you again? What am I doing here? I need, and a kind of real stubbornness. I'm fine. I'm fine.
Oh no. Yeah,
exactly. Yeah. I was trying to take him to the hospital. No, no, no. Cool. Yeah. I'm fine. Let's, let's go. No, no dude, get in the car. And in the end, I had to get his phone and call his wife or just say, you need to speak to this guy and tell him to do as he was told. He was, he was fine in the end. He didn't do so well in Kona a couple of weeks later, but, uh, uh, it's, it's been, uh, it's been a blast, uh, and, and, you know, I hope, uh, I I'm really already psyched for 2025 and, and hope that we can really improve on the learnings that we've, um, that we, that we had this year. And, and, and I think really up our game with the, the live view in the air, maybe who knows, maybe I'll go and go live in the air as well at some stage.
There you go. Keep training, buddy. Keep training. Hey, we're up against our hour, our hour here, but I do want to ask you before we go this bear grills thing. It sounds fascinating. What's that all about?
Okay. I need you to ask me about that. So back in the day,
I was a, I was a, I was a, I was a, I was a, I was a, I was a, I was a, I was a,
we're up against the time, but I used to be, I used to write for a newspaper called the Telegraph here in London. And I used to be one of those journalists. I was writing a lot about, you know, explorers and adventurers doing first in the poles and mountains, but I really cared about, you know, the, the, the facts, you know, you'd get these stories about people who youngest person to hike to the North pole. And then you kind of look at the detail and they've only gone on the last degree. So, you know, that really used to annoy me. And I was quite hot on, on challenging people's claims. And it was in 2007 and Bear had done, you know, this high altitude, a paramotor flight. And as it happened, I was in, in Kathmandu at the time. And I bumped into Gilo Cardozo, who was, who was there in Kathmandu.
And I was like, Oh, wow. How did it go? How did the expedition go? And he goes, yeah, yeah, we did it. It was amazing. I was like, great. And let's see the proof. And I was, you know, I was literally like, kind of like, yeah, let's see. And it was like, he suddenly got really defensive. I was like, Oh, well, you know, um, yeah, exactly. And he said, it'll all be in the TV show, you know, in six months time. I was like, well, okay. Um, and then fast forward about six months, I called Bear. We kind of, he wasn't really a close friend, but we knew each other socially and we had some friends in common and, you know, I called him up and I basically challenged him about the flight because at the time there was a bit of confusion, whether he had claimed to have flown over Mount Everest or just above Mount Everest. I think finally, he settled on, or it was reported that he flew above Mount Everest, certainly above, um, you know, 28,000 feet, um, above the height of Everest.
And I, and I challenged him on that. And he said to me, but Tarquin, you wouldn't write that. You're my friend.
And the
funny thing is a year later, you know, Bear, this was just before Man V Wild went mad and, you know, Bear is on every billboard from Los Angeles to London. And, you know, at the end of the day, someone sort of said to me only about, you know, five people really care about these things, but it does bring me to the, you know, the interesting thing, what, what someone said to me, well, it was actually Richard Meredith Hardy, who, who has flown a microlight over Mount Everest. You know, he, he said, you know, there are, there are three things in this game. There are, there are records, there are firsts and there are personal bests. I mean, a record is not a record unless, you know, you've got the, the, the, the authority there, you know, to document it. You know, you've got to, you know, you've got to, you know, you've got to, you know, you've got to, you know, someone with a clipboard, you know, whether it's a FAI, you know, triangle, you know, you've got to jump through various hoops.
So Bear was never going to qualify on, on the kind of record, because I think that there's some arcane rule you've got to take off from a certain altitude and all this stuff. You know, then there are firsts and, and, and, and within it, within any of these things, you know, you need to, it's not good enough just to say that you've done it. If you're a free diver, you don't get the record until you've pulled the, the card, you've done the okay sign and, and, and there are, there are other things as well you've got to do. And so that, that's, that's that. I think, I think for the record, the FIA still, FAI, sorry, still credits Raymond Marillas with the, the paramotoring altitude record, which he set in 2009. And that was 7,800 meters. I think it's still, it's still out there written that, that, that Bear flew above Mount Everest,
but certainly no, that could be camp one,
right? I mean, yeah.
There's, there's, yeah. How do you define above? It's a big mountain. He said at the time his, his GPS wasn't working, um, which is unfortunate. Um, that's kind of bad luck. Uh, but, uh, certainly, certainly there's no, no one has ever flown over Mount Everest in a paramotor. So there's a, yeah, well, I think, um, yeah, one has to be careful what one says, you know, but certainly, certainly the, uh, the, the, uh, flying over Mount Everest, you know, is yet to be done in a, in a paramotor. But, uh, but yeah, that's more, but, but, but funnily enough, I spoke, I know that his safety guys in my paragliding club, um, guy called Scott and, um, we got chatting and, uh, you know, I, I chatted with, with Bear a little bit on social media, uh, this year, just saying hi and exchanging pleasantries because we didn't really talk much after that.
And, um, he sort of let it be known that in a, in a way he was grateful for the experience of me. Sort of challenging him. And really it was, I was quite polite about it. And it was quite civil because it prepared him from what followed the following year. He, there was an absolute shit storm where he was accused of, you know, like staying in hotels or kind of faking it on man be wild, which was really stupid actually, because, because actually that was a TV show. And, you know, it's kind of what you do when you're making a TV show, you do stay in hotels. And, and, and, and I have, I have met people who work for Bear, you know, and they all say he does his own stunts, you know, on that stuff. He's, you know, I don't, I don't think you can question what he does. I mean, he's, he does some pretty ballsy stuff, but yeah, on that, that little high altitude, uh, was it, or wasn't it a flight above or over Mount Everest?
I think we're still yet to get really to the bottom of exactly what he did, which is a shame because whatever he did, whatever he and Gilo did was amazing. I mean, I mean, it's still cool. It's still paved the way, you know, experimental. Um, and Gilo's an interesting character. In fact, funny enough, I was talking to, um, a colleague of mine, you know, we used to write about active sports, you know, on the, on the paper and his, for his, so I did one on, on paramotoring and my guy, we're coming into land. He doesn't see the tree because my head is in front of his head. And, uh, and I, I'm classic passenger. Don't say anything. He's the pilot. Don't say anything. And at the last minute he sees this tree, we bank hard to the ride and, you know, we ended up landing on a, on a dry stove wall, but, but it was okay. We dusted ourselves down and he bought me lunch and I promised not to write about it.
But my colleague, my colleague did a, he, you know, a year or two before or after I forget which, but he did a story on Gilo and he's never flown in his life. Gilo puts him in a, in a paramotor and says, right off you go. And just starts talking. This is what you do. And you know, you just know you'd never do this. Gilo is probably only about 20, 21 years old. And this guy absolutely freezes in terror, you know, his pants, everything. Near death experience. And he's luckily he's survived, but this episode, then he then wrote a novel and this novel has been published and the central character dies in a paramotoring incident. And, and, and he describes this, this incident of taking off where they, yeah, absolutely.
You know, he's up in the air and just convinced he's going to fly into some electricity pylons and yeah, you wouldn't do that now, would you?
No, I'd like to think I wouldn't.
Yeah. So there's my bear, bear grill story.
Fantastic. Tarquin, great catching up with you. That was a lot of fun. I'm glad you pitched this and hope you all listening enjoyed it, but thanks man. Appreciate it.
Yeah. Really enjoyed it, Gavin. I can't wait to see you again in 2025.
Yeah, man. Can't wait to see you bud. See ya.
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