Hi there everybody, welcome to another episode of the Cloudbase Mayhem. Got a great show for you today, just got off the line with Marcus King. Marcus was one of the big people who made my book a reality. He has been with Cross Country Magazine for an awful long time. He does all their gear reviews and wing reviews and is in charge of most of the marketing you see. Before that he did marketing for Ozone. He was with the Ozone team right from the beginning, back in the Dav and Mike days. He's been part of the Red Bull X-Alps reporting on that since the very beginning. That's where he and I got to know each other more, his reporting on the race. He started flying in 1991 and was part of the British team and BWCs and has a long history of flight.
And all those reviews you see in Cross Country Magazine, of all the different wings and all the different harnesses are because of Marcus. So we talk about all of that and then we get to a not so comfortable subject. But in this case it's all coming out pretty well. Marcus pounded really hard in September, just going out behind his house in Gris-au-Lierre, which is right behind Gourdon in the Southern Maritimes in France, right where Ozone is. An amazing place to fly, an awesome place to clock up hours. Because you fly there pretty much every day. And he was just going out for a very standard hike and fly, no red flags, no wind, nothing gnarly at all.
Just a completely mellow day and sometimes that's what grabs you. He talks about the complacency, flying a different wing than he was really used to, not having enough margin. As always, it's never one thing, it's a few different things and the ground hurts. So this one looked pretty grim in the beginning. I remember getting the message right away from Ed Ewing, the editor of the magazine, and it sounded pretty rough. But four months later, Marcus is on the path to full recovery and will hopefully be flying again soon. And this is another one of those reminders that we need to make sure that every flight we take is one we put a lot of focus into.
A lot of great lessons here. A lot of fun stories, a lot of great background, and I think you'll definitely enjoy it. A little bit of housekeeping before we get there. As you'll hear at the very end of the show, Marcus talks about an awesome giveaway that CrossCulture Magazine is doing right now. I wanted to just put it in the front of the show too. But if you subscribe right now, go to xcmag.com forward slash subscribe. You could be in to win a wing and it's a wing of your choice from Jen, Advance, Ozone, or Supair. Pretty cool giveaway. Check that out. If you don't already subscribe to the magazine, you definitely should. It's a great mag. And the other thing is I've got a whole slew of new Patagonia t-shirts coming our way.
They should be here and I'll have them up on the website hopefully by the time this show goes live, if not in the next couple days. But I've needed some new shirts for a long time with our logo and our motto. Our motto, sorry.
Fly more, talk less. So if you've been looking for one of these shirts and haven't been that jazzed about the gray ones I've had for ever and ever, finally run out of those and I got a new batch coming. So check that out on the website, cloudbasemayhem.com and I'll get it off to you. Happy New Year, everybody. Enjoy the show. Cheers.
Marcus, welcome to the Mayhem. Most of the time I see you in the Alps for the Red Bull X-Alps, so this is a nice way to see one another. We're going to get into what has defined, I'm sure, much of your life the last few months. For those who don't know, you hit the ground pretty hard, I understand, and you're making a good comeback. So we'll get to that. But I thought where we'd start for those who don't know about your history, you know, we're sitting in a party together and we're having a chat and I ask you, who are you and what do you do? How would you answer that? I'm going to start with you.
OK, well, job wise, I'm the designer for Cross Country Magazine, or one of the partners actually in Cross Country Magazine, along with Ed Ewing and Hugh Miller. So that's that's my main job. But I've been paragliding for a long time, 30 years plus. I started back in 1991.
The
early, early days.
Yeah, on the small hills of Wiltshire in England. Yeah, quite different from what the flying is around. And here where I live now, which is in France. So I yeah, I started I was working as a programmer at a manufacturing company and I started flying back then, just saw an advert in the in a Watson magazine. I thought that looks interesting. And I had seen it on a climbing tour in Chamonix. We'd passed through Chamonix and I'd seen these gliders coming off the Breville, but didn't know anything about it. And that was probably a year or two before. I saw this advert and went, why not? All my mates had gone climbing in Scotland, but I had to be around to do to be on call for the company I was working for.
So it was kind of a bit of a loose end and saw this advert and thought, yeah, why not give it a go? And I had I was really lucky. I had four days of beautiful weather, which is quite uncommon in Breville. Yeah, right. And, you know, I was able to fly by the end of it. So and the bug had bitten almost straight away.
What a day. What did that instruction look like back in ninety one? Here's this thing go. Yeah,
kind of. I think we were on airwave black magics and other such things. So the glide angle of a brick and we were just on sloping hills. He could kind of just run down the hill. You might get a bit off the ground and kind of wobble your way down and then touch down again. I mean, there was no school building or anything like that. And the instructor, Dave Solem. My instructor turned up in his Land Rover in the car park. We drove up the hill and that was it. I spent the day on the hill.
Did you did you have any hang background or do you start right off with PG?
I started straight away with paragliding. Oh, interesting. I come from I've been into climbing a bit. I went to university in North Wales, which is a bit of the home of which is kind of the home of climbing at the time. I actually met Bob Drury there while I was a student. So it was the first time we met and we then met later through paragliding and did stuff together. But I
just watched that. I think it's called you put me on to it. A big blue sky and I'm preparing for these talks with some of the legendary hang pilots, Roy Haggard and Tom Pagini and John Heine and those guys. And I'll be going out to California here soon to talk to them. But that documentary of the kind of the beginning of hang gliding is amazing and the footage they have of exactly what you're talking about. But this was the early seventies, you know, when they're just hucking it with these crazy contraptions and, you know, they'll fly 10 seconds or 15 seconds and just, you know, monumentally stoked and can't wait for the next one. And it's pretty remarkable.
Yeah. I mean, when I started paragliding, I passed my license in Britain, went to the local club, which was the Haven Hang Gliding Paragliding Haven. Hang gliding club as it was then, I guess. And I turned up, there was three paraglider pilots in the meeting and a room full of hang glider pilots. So hang gliding was, you know, the thing that everybody did at that time.
Right. Right. Sure.
Fast forward a little bit. Then where
did it go?
So I kind of, I met through doing the British nationals and other comps. I met Mike.
And when they set up Ozone, I spoke to him about a job there and in the early 2000s, I ended up moving out to France with him. Well, not with him, to Ozone, to come and work for Ozone as their marketing person, doing the website, doing adverts, doing manuals. But back then there was only five, five of us, five or six of us. We were in a very small office and all the gliders came. And that's when Ozone came to the office to be then distributed. So it wasn't just doing my work. It was packing boxes. It was going out on the hill with David and Robbie, who were the test pilots at the time, helping test the bigger sizes a bit. So it was kind of, you did a bit of everything.
It was really nice sort of family scene. Hmm. I had a real family feel about the company and we all worked together and we played together. And. So that's what brought me to France. And then I'd done, I, when I was back before that in Britain, when I was part of the club scene, I'd done the newsletter for the club. And so when I was in France and I got to meet Bob Durie, who then became the editor of Cross Country, he then asked me to join him to help with Cross Country. So I ended up moving from Ozone to become Cross Country and doing the design.
And layout of the magazine. But you were able to stay in
France to do that.
Yeah. Yeah. So Bob will stay. We both lived in the same village. We're both in a village just behind Gordon, which is fairly well-known flying site. It's where Ozone test team test all the time and BGD are in the same area. And I think SUP Air are also here. It's all part of the SUP Air test team are here. Okay. So it's a well-known flying area.
Yeah. I mean, you fly. You fly pretty much every day, don't you?
You can do. Yeah. Yeah. It's been a bit more challenging in recent years with climate change, changing the winds a bit. Definitely when we first moved here, you'd expect 300 days a year. Oh, amazing. According to Bruce.
Yeah. And you, were you back then, were you also testing gliders or were you more marketing? Because I know now you do a lot of testing in gliders.
I was more for Ozone. I was more marketing. Okay. I did get asked to test, not for a safety point of view. So I didn't do the EN test style flying, but I did testing of the bigger sizes to see how they felt, see if they were in line with what the guys were saying for the smaller sizes. So we got involved a bit in that, but not proper test flying, not the sort of test line that Russ and Honorin do now, which is the safety tests and all that.
Sure, sure. And what was, what was your own kind of path or journey? I always think of Jim Mallinson when I say journey. He said that's one of his least favorite words. But what, what was your, I understand you flew world cups for a while. You know, where has your passion kind of led you with the flying aspect thing? It sounds like mostly it's been marketing in terms of the work, but yeah, I know you're a very keen pilot. You spend a lot of time in the air.
Yeah. So I started flying when I first flew, there weren't so many of us flying. So, I mean, I remember the first year of flying, I flew about 11 kilometers, I think on one flight and it was in the top 10 of the British league. I was in the top 10 of the British league. So it was very easy to get, find yourself quite highly placed. So I ended up doing the nationals, the British nationals, and then from that doing the world cup. Not overly successfully. So I found myself in this bigger pool of very good pilots from Europe and realized I didn't have the skill level that I necessarily needed, but it was fun. It was a learning process.
And yeah, so I kept doing national level competitions, I guess. I never had amazing success. I'm not a brilliant pilot. I don't think, but I enjoyed it and it taught me a huge amount. So it was a great learning process for cross country. Flying. I think that's probably more my passion. I like flying, flying through the mountains. So here we're lucky. We've got some great routes from the back door. Yeah. You can walk out the back door and take off and go north and that takes you to some very nice mountains.
Yeah. The, the Maritimes are one of my favorite places on earth. It's just, uh, you know, I only got to really hang out there very much for the, either the training of the races or the, or the races, but it's, uh, I always say I should spend more time down there. They're, they're just magnificent. You know, they're incredible for bivy there. I did a, one of my favorite trips in all those years of training. I think it was for the first one in 2015, I started in Chamonix at the Bravant and hiked up the Bravant and, and had my bivy kit and just flew down the Maritimes and got to, I don't know, 30, 40 K of, of the med. And, you know, it's just incredible. You're in, you're, you're right on the, the border of France and Italy.
And, and yet you feel like you kind of have it all yourself. It's a pretty amazing area.
I mean, there's a lot
of terrain, a lot of terrain, a lot of big terrain and people haven't been in there. You don't realize it. It's big stuff.
Yeah. Cause it's the main chain coming to the sea. So, yeah. And yeah, Tim has made some great videos, highlight some of the possibilities and, and flying through the aircraft and stuff. And I remember when I first did a lot of cross country fly with Bob Drury, we did some flights through the aircraft early on, probably early 2000s. And I think we were some of the first people to fly through them. And it was just, I remember Bob saying it was, it's some of the most intense terrain that he's flown through and he's flown in the Himalayas and other places. So it,
it really is. Uh, help me with that. Um, Ebron, the, the, the fort above Lake Ebron, uh, a real famous flying site by the castle up there. The castle burned down a few, Saint Vincent. Yeah. One of my first, I used to do these trips. I did a couple of trips with Toby Cologne with Passion Paragliding, where he would start in Annecy and end in Nice or start in Nice and end in Annecy. So it was kind of a van version of the Maritimes part of the X-Alps, but you would just, you would just create a task given the day and you'd go as far as you could. And then we'd stay there and then start from there the next day. It was really neat. It was a cool way to learn that part of the world. And, uh, we, we, one day, uh, we started it at Saint Vincent and flew down to San Andre and it's only, what
is that? A
hundred K? I think it's
50K down to San Andre. Is it only 50K? Yeah, it's kind of a big memory trick. It's on the north of Saint Vincent, on the top of the ridges of Dormeuse. And there's a big fort on the very top of the ridge. Yep. Yeah. And that's our, one of the turn points that we normally use if we're doing triangles from here.
Okay. Yeah. I just remember that being so awesome. I mean, some of that terrain between there, it's just gray rock and spiky and, you know, it's very much kind of like my backyard, you know, it's just, whoa, where am I? You know, this doesn't seem like France. It's really, really magnificent.
Pretty stunning. It's really stunning. And
the Brits have, you often have your, one of your national events there in San Andre, right? I remember Russ Ogden saying that his two favorite places to fly a comp were Chelan here in Washington and San Andre. And San Andre is a pretty remarkable place to fly triangles.
Yeah, there's lots of opportunity now. And I think the great thing about San Andre is in the past, it was those people just flew the Dormeuse ridge up to Saint Vincent back. Yeah. Yeah. People are flying out into the flatlands and big triangles out that way, out to Cistern and then back across to the top of the Dormeuse. So, I mean, Luc and Honorin and others have done some big flights from Col de Blen, going out towards Cistern and out almost to the big Rhone Valley. Yeah. And then back across and then down to create 300K triangles. It's very impressive. Yeah, that one,
what Baptiste did last year, that was that 350 or something. Yeah. It's just, hey, caramba. Yeah.
Even for the normal pilot. Yeah. There's the opportunity to do 200K triangles around it. Yeah, sure. So, because you just shorten some of those legs and you're still using the main fur affairs, but you can. Right. To come back on and
stuff. Magnificent place to fly. We haven't cracked that code over here yet. We just, we don't, the train doesn't quite line up for us in that way. We, we climb awful fast. We get awful high, but we just have not figured out. It's there. We know it's there. But we just haven't figured out how to do it. You know, you have those early starts where you guys can fly 50, 60K without making a turn, even at 830, you know, you just stick your wing tip on the terrain. Keep going. It's pretty special.
Okay. Switching to the mag and, and you, you know, you are the guy who does a lot of wing reports and wing testing. I would imagine that's tricky from a perspective of the magazine. You know, you want to be honest, but you also want to be, you know, you don't want to potentially ruin a relationship with a, with a manufacturer. How does that work in the back end? I think a lot of people are curious about that. You know, you want to put out a report that is accurate, but you know, gear reviews can often be swayed. How does that work?
Yeah. I think we have to be very careful about what we say about wings. As in. I don't think you could be overly negative because obviously manufacturers will not take kindly to that. It's not just because yeah, they're paying, they are paying us money for others, but we tried to be totally truthful about our reviews.
What I always think is I'm trying to explain to people the character of the wing. I don't think there's really bad wings these days. That's it. Yeah, exactly. And also I, you know, perform. Yeah, exactly. I don't think there's really bad performance between different wings. I can't tell in a, in a, in a review, it's really hard to tell. Yeah. I think over time, then maybe a glider is shown to perform a little bit better, but it takes lots of people flying it in competitions or, but you know, for the lower class wings, you don't get that information because it's all subjective and, you know, unless you're flying exactly the same harness and clothes, even you can't compare performance. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm. Because Ozone, they spend a lot of time trying to compare two wings together on glide. And it's really hard. Yeah. Because the pilots and the harness and the, even the clothing, even if you've got a beard can affect the glide.
Yeah. It's crazy. Just down at the Monarca in Valle and you know, the, there were quite a few pilots flying the GR5, the, the gen version of the, of the submarine. And it, it, it's so interesting because. Yeah. Yeah. You know, we all kind of went, we have it, we, we won't know for a year really you got to put a lot of people on this thing and, and fly it around and see, you know, is it, does it have an advantage on the sub? Is it a disadvantage. Can we even tell it's you, you can do all the wind tunnel testing and everything else and get the numbers. But. Yeah. Like you said, it's, it's pretty hard isn't it? It's gotta be. Yeah. from where you're sitting it's going to be nearly impossible so
How usable that performance is, isn't it right for a glider? Definitely. Obviously, the harness is slightly different, but and I think, yeah, again, time gives you that information if it's used a lot in competitions. So I guess now, with the sports class competitions, we're going to get that information for that level of glider as well. Sure, yeah, it's before it was only really we were only getting that for the top-end gliders; now we're seeing the true performance of gliders.
the the sports class thing I've been meaning to do it, uh, a show specifically on it. It's really exciting, isn't it? I mean, one of the things that I love about sports, like baseball and basketball and football, is there's not really gear doesn't matter, you know? I mean, unless the shoes, okay? I mean, maybe a pair of Air Jordans is a little bit better, but it's, it's really down to the athlete. And this has been one of the, it's hard when you get into sports like skiing and paragliding where the equipment is a really big deal, you know? Michaela Schifrin, you know, she ships a container of skis everywhere she goes, and she's got a tuner just for her.
He only does her skis, and so you know, it's a, it's a marketable advantage, uh, when you, when you have, when you're relying on equipment. In our sport really relies on equipment, and so you know, I've, I've often thought, wouldn't it be great if we were all flying the exact same thing? And then we could really see, you know, who is the best pilot, you know? Then we would see that honor and still went, you know? But, but probably exactly. But it's, it, the sports class is really cool because it's, it allows competition at not such a fierce end of the spectrum where you're not totally reliant on gear. It's exciting. I'm really glad that this is happening. It's a
Very exciting new way for the competitions, and I did a couple of the comps this year, last year, sorry, and it was really nice to be there. It was really, it really made me enthusiastic for competition flying again because I didn't have to be on the whizzy machine; I could be on a fair, you know, relatively safe machine. Yes, i
feel
comfortable on it, and they go good. i
You know, we were just down there. There were quite a few people on the—on the Arctic and the Photon, and you know, the kind of the new enc two-liners, and you know, they're—you never see them take a hit. You know, they're—they're incredibly, uh, robust in the air, and—and you know, but they have that two-liner feel that we all love who fly two-control as well. So, and the two-liner control, which is a big difference, yeah, which is a big difference. You can feel it, and—and you can push them, which is—it's pretty neat.
I've really, I flew the Photon last year mainly and really enjoyed flying that, like, in Italy at Jambona, and you can go on these long glides and you can use the rear risers all the time to control the wing, and you feel safe because you've got that control. Yeah, you have that level of extra level of control that you then you had before on seas, so yeah.
I mean, I remember back in, in the day, and this has been a long time, but uh, you know, when I flew the Arctic Two, you know, enc back in the day, you know, it was just a mat. You know, at some point, you're going to take a huge hit; at some point, you're going to take a massive frontal, and you had nothing to tell you that it was, it was going to happen. And, you know, these days now, they just, you don't see it happening. They're, they're, they're, they're very, it's an exciting development. I'm sure the technology is
better, and yeah, the feels better. So you, you're reacting to it a lot more
Yeah, you can feel it. You can feel what's happening with the air, which is, which is great. I mean, that's, you know, that's why two liners are so exciting, and I
Think the other thing about the sports class comps is they feel very supportive. Everybody is in there to help each other get the best out of it; even the people are pushing to win, but you know they're willing to pass information around all the time. Yeah, and
That's special. Found it, a
really supportive environment, mentoring belt built in in a
sense. Yeah, yeah, that that's good to see.
people blossoming in that environment, yeah.
One of the things I've been really noticing in our scene in the U.S. comp scene lately is that, uh, you know, you can people are coming up through the ranks and and becoming very accomplished comp pilots way faster than and, you know, it used to be that, you know, 10 years before you'd fly an end or a CCC wing or, you know, a comp wing back in the day and and it would, it would just, it would take longer, uh, to to get there. It would take longer to learn how to perform with the best in the world and, you know, with the with the wings these days and, like you said, with the mentoring, you know, Nate made a comment.
Nate Scales, my neighbor, who's been in the game as long as you have, and he said, you know, you, you know, he was down in Valle and he was blown away by the scene now and he was blown away by the because it used to be competitive, you know, they used to throw beer bottles out the at the out of the window at each other's heads and, you know, if you were on a Firebird and or, you know, there was that team versus the other team and and it was, it was really competitive and it's obviously still competitive at the at the World Cup and and people want to win but it's there's a lot of mentoring going on, there's a lot of, uh, you know, people are really helping each other out and it's good to see, yeah, as you said
part of they're accelerating through the process quite very quickly, now very quickly. It's almost scary, it's just wow, but it's but becoming good pilots as well. Exactly, it's not like a shortcut there.
I'm sure a lot of that's just the trust in the glider as well, you know? You just, you have this machine that's very different than what you guys were we're dealing with, where you know, you're just the whole object is to keep the thing open, you know? Now it's, we don't have to worry about that nearly as much. We can really know you can press, yeah, that's
What, like I said, with the reviews, it's there aren't really bad gliders anymore. There aren't; it's just gliders have different flavors, they have different feel, and and for me, the review is to try and express that, so people can choose the wings that suit their style of flying. People, you know, people have a flavor, yeah, and
before we get to your your accident, and I want to spend most of the time in the show on that because it's, it's, uh, you know, the you've had a pretty interesting a few months, of course, and thankfully I think we're heading towards a happy ending, which is great, but, uh, before we get to that, you know, you have to put out a number of shows on the XOps. He's kind of, you know, a walk and fly down memory lane, and I'm done those all with athletes, but you and and Ed and Hugh over the years have been very involved with the Red Bull XOps, and I thought it'd be really fun to pause here for a second and get your take on it. Could just be a singular story, you know, some crazy memory that you have from it, but, uh, you know, we're still a ways out from from 25, but it's a, it's a subject that everybody knows who listens to the show knows I love so much, but it'd be interesting to get your take from the other side because it was, it was quite different for me, obviously, this time being on your side of the fence, so you're from the journalism side of the fence, and it was, it's pretty wild watching those guys and girls, oh
Amazing to watch them, and it's just every year, every time they get, they get faster and faster, and you think, "Oh, they might not get around this year," but they do. Yeah,
right and
It's, yeah, it's and it's been interesting how it's changed. I mean, I remember it must have been, yeah, it was the first time and Dav de Gaulle was in it and we were, we were in the overland office, we're trying to support him and Nicky, his then partner, who was, you know, supporting him and we were just like, none of the technology was really there. We didn't have all the weather forecasting like they do now and it was just a case of ringing up, you know, the contacts of the company, who's the distributor, distributor in that area, ring them up, get the information. But I remember Nicky going, "I don't know where Dav is, he went over this hill and I haven't got, I've got a clue where he's gone now," because there's hardly any tracking.
It was really hard. And it's just the technology wasn't there. But now you can follow them. You can watch them firmly in 3D. Yeah, on your screen, and it's, yeah, that side of it's really changed, and we're getting a lot more access to what happens as watchers, as viewers, because every team has their own media people now. Yeah, so they're busy recording everything, putting it on their own social, and right, it's so much more open, and people say—I do hear a lot of people going, "Oh, it's more, more and more dangerous."
It's, but I think actually what's happening now is you're seeing more of it. If you, I mean, I remember hearing Dav stories at the time and it was just as wild. Yeah, you know, flying through storms, avoiding storms, getting tumbled. I mean, he told me about getting tumbled coming down through the valley and his reserve popped out. He managed to grab it, put in his pocket, and flew on, of course, as you do. But nobody really knew about it at the time. But no, that would be all over social media, right? So I think when people are going, I think the race is getting sketchier and sketchier. It's not—it's the same race, it's just we can see it a lot more now.
Wow, that's an interesting, yeah, that's interesting. I'm sure you get to see
Every moment, yeah, it's—it's especially now. You were there flying alongside it, and that gives another element to it.
Yeah, and I've, you know, I've really upped my kit since then. You know, this time I just showed up and they went, "Here, use this," and it wasn't—it wasn't that it was bad, it just wasn't quite right, and it was—it made it really hard to take off. And, you know, I had my own little X-Alps adventures because of the—because of the filming equipment. So I've, I've, I've now got really good gear, and we had, you know, we had this live platform that Red Bull gave, Zoom, I think, 48 hours before the prologue. So I mean, we, we really didn't figure it out until the race was over. Uh, you know, we kind of had it figured out when I was dialing down over Ellie, over Ellie, you know, in a spiral dive going to the raft, and that was finally, it works, you know, literally at the end of the race. So I think that's going to be really exciting.
We might be able to tap into Starlink next time, and I think that'll be the
possibilities as a
Possibility, yes, exactly. I, you know, there's just so many stories embedded in that race that never even come out. You know, there's just things that happen to every team, every race, that are, you know, that would enter, they're a book in themselves, I'm sure. Yeah, everybody. What's the—what's the—when you think of the X-Ops, what's—what's the craziest thing you saw, either personally or story you heard? Or, you know, of all the years, that's a tough one. I'm putting you on the spot here, but is it—are there any that just—I remember one of my fondest and kind of head-check memories I have is after the 2015 race.
You know, when I was in the X-Ops, I was in the X-Ops and I was in the
Fushel and I had, you know, I had the the van booked for the wrong return. I couldn't even go to the party. We drove all, Bruce and I drove all night. After we got to Monaco and we were just hammered, just so tired, and we got to, uh, the Zoom office and Fushel and Ed was there and, you know, Big Ed and he, he gave me this look in this, then he gave me this hug that was just, I'm glad you're, you know, 2015 was a really windy year and there were a lot of accidents that year and a lot of withdrawals, but you know, he just kind of knew, he knew what I'd gone through and he gave me this look that was just, I'll cherish it forever, but it was, it was a real look of concern. You know, I was, you know, and I, I often read that and you guys, because when you're embedded and you're hearing the stories and you're reporting on it and you're, and you're seeing the weather, uh, it's, yeah, it is a little spooky.
We
get to know all the athletes that, yeah, yeah, this—the, the brilliant thing about our sport is you can talk to anybody in the sport, yeah? And everybody's approachable, and it's—they're like your friends within about five minutes because we all share this thing in common. And so, when we wander around at the start and we talk to people, we become friends with them. We have a vested interest in them, and you—we worry about them when we watch the show. What's the race going ahead from our offices? We—we're worried about these people because they're our friends, yeah, yeah, it's—yeah, and I think that's something really special about our sport is that we—we
get to mix with the best in the sport. It's like walking, you know, meeting people that are in the NBA or, yeah, football Premier League footballers, and you just walk and talk with them.
Right, yeah. You want to talk to Chrigel? Go talk to him; he's happy to talk to you every
Every top, every everybody in the X-Alps has always got time. I know they have to come and talk to us because we're the magazine, but I genuinely feel that they all have time. Yeah,
Yeah, that is special. That's really neat. It's
something special about our sport as well. We walk on to Gordon Russ, is there? He'll talk to you.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that is really special. All right, bud, so what happened to happen, what, uh, on that fateful day? So
I think it was, it's a story of complacency. I think it's kind of the end. It was the end of a season, yeah? Season with lots of flying, it was, and good flying and enjoying myself. And it was just another morning doing a hike and fly. I've been doing lots of hike and fly on our local hill and
Nothing special, just a normal day. Walked up, lovely conditions early in the morning, so nothing really happening. Took off, flew around a bit, using some gentle lift. Flew along the hill a bit, along the ridge, and then came back. Decided to try and get up in the cliffs and, uh, I
think it's taken me a while to work out probably what happened, and it is a bit of conjecture because I don't actually have a full recollection of what happened. It all got blanked out at the time, and little snippets I can remember—snippets, that's it. Interesting, and uh, I remember working a little bit of lift in in this corner in the cliffs, and I've I followed it back over the sort of edge of the cliffs onto the sloping slope behind, and I turned to try and keep in this little bubble lift, and I think I just spanned the wing at that point mainly. And looking back at it, I think I'd been flying for a while, and I think I'd been flying for a while flying a normal big enc2 liner earlier in the week, which has quite long break travel, was used to that.
Had been flying wings with fairly long break travel a lot of the time, and flowing the little mountain wing quite so much, and Its brakes are set very short, so I think I just went to turn tightly and just overdid it. Not in itself a problem, I recognize the problem why. You know, we've spun gliders lots in testing and stuff, and it's something I always do with gliders when I first get them is, you know, search for the spin and just take it to the spin point and do 180 degree spin and fly out. And I think the glider started to spin, so I released, and I remember the glider going out in front, so I went to catch it.
The next thing, I'm on the ground. So I think I just pendulumed into the hill because I hadn't left enough space. You didn't have enough margin there, okay? Yeah. So I sort of, you know, have that snippet of it being in front, and then I have a then I'm then
You're on the ground.
then I'm on the ground and then
I have to think about rescue, so with complacency again, I hadn't really said what I was doing. My partner, my wife, and was not there. Nobody really knew I was actually flying, yeah.
You're just going out for a little quick, it's
Fine, I'm just going for a high fly. I'll be landing at the field. It's fine, but one... luckily, one thing I've always been careful about is keeping my phone in a place where I can always reach it, and it's just something drilled, been drilled into me. So luckily, I was able to get my phone and call for help, and I was very lucky that the local school were on site, so our local instructor, Cedric Busar, was teaching students. He got told there was, then got involved with organizing the rescue. So actually, the rescue went really smoothly. I was very lucky, so
i could
have been. If I hadn't had a phone, and I, I could have been stuck on that hillside because nobody would have known I was there.
yeah right but
Luckily, I was able to phone and this, the this, my instructor got the rescue working very smoothly. He sent up his ti ran up the hill to me along with one of the students who happened to be, uh, a nurse in the fire brigade, so they were running up the hill. One of his other students had a drone, so he sent the drone up to find my exact position and guide these two guys into me. And at the same time, the the helicopter was being called and that was on its way. And luckily, I, another good thing here in France is we, we do have these rescue helicopters and here it's very close. It's at Nice, so it's not very far away. It's, you know, 10 minutes flight time away.
And I was very lucky that it was available, so it came straight to me, and it was with me in 20 minutes, I think. Did
They have to lift you out, or could
You, they did have to lift me out. I don't remember the lift because, um, I remember them arriving, they dropped the two paramedics and they came and checked me over. I said, "I think I've broken my pelvis," and I had some other small wounds, but, um, they then, yeah, obviously checked me over, decided I had what my injuries were, and they said, "Right, we're going to have to lift you out." And at that point, they gave me gas and air and I passed out because they couldn't get a stretcher and I was just in the harness anyway, so it would have been fairly excruciating. I would have thought, "Yeah, right, broken pelvis to be just harnessed out." Did you just have a little string bikini harness or a proper
Do you have some protection, I...
had a airbag on the bottom of it, I had a reserve as well
Another good thing that I had was a proper EN certified flying helmet, because I did take a pretty good hit to your head. I took a chunk out the helmet, wow, and it was—that was something we had been flying in climbing helmets like, probably earlier in the same year, me and my wife and one of the readers complained because of some—they were on some videos going, "Oh, you should really be flying EN and in certified helmets," and we kind of went, "Yeah, right." And at that point I went, "Actually, and we're not even saving any weight, yeah, compare the specs." And Ed was going, "I think you know, as a magazine, we should be seen to be doing the proper thing." And I'm so glad he said that, because yeah, I took a whack to a rock somewhere along the way, and and my helmet took the brunt of it.
I'm
Glad you brought that up. We actually made that, uh, you know, that's been a mandatory thing in the, in the X-Alps, which for a long time I didn't really understand. And I mean, climbing out, what's got to be our ski helmet, gotta be just, it's good, but they're not, they're not made for the same thing, um, and, uh, by a long stretch. And so the, and like you said, you know, the the subair helmet, I think Ozone's got one now too, that are, they're just as light. Yeah, that's what
I was using was a subair pilot, yeah.
the pilot, yeah, which is great. I mean, that's what I've been using for years. Um, so broken pelvis, what else?
Uh, a broken vertebrae up in the thorax, which was, I believe, from the sort of, um, hitting over, bending over under the impact. Okay, so your body gets thrown forward, and that—that movement is enough to break a vertebrae, and I think it was a couple of cracked ribs and usual stuff. And so, yeah, I was taken to hospital and was left in a coma for a day, kept in a coma for a day. Oh, and then you were in—you were so, once they induced
you in a coma, so
Once I'd had the gas and air, I passed out and I didn't come around for a whole day, so they kept me under for the next day, next 24 hours. They did that on purpose, uh yeah, because they wanted to stabilize me.
Ah, okay. Oh, wow, okay. So there was, there was risk then, a spinal cord injury, yeah?
There were sure at that point. Yeah, I mean, I remember, it's obviously one of the first things you check when you're lying on the hill. They're going, "Oh, yeah, I can move my feet, that's all right." But as they said to my wife, that's no guarantee, because when they move you, they're, they're doing, they're keeping you alive. That's all they care about. Sure, really right, that's the first thing is they're keeping you alive. Yeah, if they have, you know, obviously they will try their best to keep you your spine straight and stuff, but they can't guarantee it. And they, and with, obviously, with the pelvic injury, there was lots of grinding going on down there as well. So, yeah, I was kept in the coba, and then they operated. They did the first operation on the pelvis just to stabilize it.
Okay, two pins, and then they brought me out of the coba. I woke up in ICU on the ventilator and
Yeah, welcome back to the world, which was kind of, yeah, scary, yeah.
That's very scary, I
think more scary for people watching, like my... I've got two teenage sons who obviously came to see me, and I... the look on their face, I won't forget for a long time.
Now they're thinking, "Is Dad going to be in a wheelchair? Is he going to be?" Yeah, man, scary stuff. And the vertebrae...
Did that require surgery? Luckily, that didn't know I had scans, and they decided I didn't need surgery. So, was that the only thing that was going to happen to you? Was that a, uh,
Forgive my lack of, uh, body knowledge here, but is that the—was it a disc, or was it the vertebrae? It was a compression of
the vertebrae
okay okay according
Yeah, so you're a little bit shorter. Says it's a 50 squashing of that vertebrae, but without any bulging, so that's a good thing. There's no bulging into the... okay, okay, the central canal. What... do
They do for that, do they go in and do, uh, MRIs and just make sure there's no little pieces that can cut stuff had
MRI scans to check that that was all right, and that's when they decided they didn't need to do surgery on that.
okay but
how long
Were you in hospital, well?
I was in, so I was taken to Nice Hospital, which is the local emergency air hospital for our area, and that's where I had my. So I was there in ICU. They then did the first operation, and a couple of days later I had my the main operation, which was to put in two big screws and a plate across the front of the pelvis with lots of little screws, so I look like a Meccano set now, but um, and they. So I was there for probably 10 days, and then here we are. Lucky we've got these rehabilitation centers, so I got moved to one that's in Grass, which is just basically you can see Gordon Flying Sight from it.
and uh, and there they can do physio. There's, you know, they have lots of physios, and it's—you've got all the stuff you need to make your recovery to get you back on your feet. For me, the biggest thing was I had to wait for the bones to heal before they could do too much, so I had two months of not being able to go above 45 degrees inclination, so basically flat on my back, partly because of the vertebrae and partly because of the pelvis. Oh,
God, that's a long time to lay around.
That was the hard part, mentally, just the waiting. And also, what did you
What did you experience there? What, what, what were some of the, uh, did you latch on to any? I don't know, you start meditating? Did you read like crazy? Did you watch Netflix? What were you, what were you doing to help get you through that? I
Yeah, did a lot of reading, did watch quite a bit about Netflix. I mean, I got lots of good advice from some quite, you know, well-known pilots. Was straight through messaging me lots, and like Tom the door lot, who had quite a big accident, I think, said, "Just take every day one day at a time." And that's so such good, in such good advice, because it's really easy to go, "Oh, it's six weeks, is my my goal. I get six weeks and I'll be all right." And then you get to six weeks and the surgeon goes, "Actually, you need another two weeks," and you just drop. I had that in that they said you get different information from the surgeons along the way.
and they said
So it'll be six weeks for repair, and then you can start walking. And then you get to six weeks, they go, "No, you need a bit more because your bones haven't consolidated enough." And when you set that goal and it's taken away from you, it's such a huge mental drop. Yeah, yeah, I don't mind admitting there were tears at those moments, absolutely quite bleak moments. But you know, all the advice I was giving people, giving and taking one day at a time, and that's really helped. And I just kind of focused on working for each day, and then you go, "Oh, several weeks have gone now." And yeah, it's only a couple of weeks.
Yeah, right, but not try.
To think too far ahead and just do for me, it was, you know, I was motivated to do what I could with the exercises, exercises I could. And the great thing is, because I was in this rehabilitation center with the physios there, they even when I could only lie down, they've taken me up on my stretcher bed into the physio room and I would do exercises with my lower legs and with my upper, you know, with my arms to keep build the strength there, just to keep everything moving but without putting force on it. So it meant that when I finally got the go-ahead to stand up, I could move a lot quicker, I think. And the acceleration once you could stand up, it was like one in a couple of weeks, I went from not walking
to walking with a hoist holding me up, to then walking with a big walker frame, to then walking with a normal frame, to walking with crutches, to walking without the crutches, all in the space of two weeks. And it just felt—that just felt really incredible, kind
of like being 11 months again. It sounds like you just suddenly go from the ground to the to the sky. Whoa, I'm doing it. Yeah, and it's probably just as exciting as it was when I was in the physio room and I was like, "Oh my god, I'm 21."
years old, and I was like, "Oh my god!" But it's like, just, it's like, it's just, it's a crazy, it's like a crazy reality to me. Like, I'm like in the middle of a far away land, I can't even have my nose, and I can't even get my feet up. It's like, this is crazy, and I'm like, that's what I was feeling really excited about, and I did it with the promise of steps I was putting down because, and I think I'm not even going to do anything like this, and that's why I had to do it because I was going to do this. It was kind of a preemptive process, and I was like, "You know what? My blood pressure is going to be like..." and I don't think it's going to be anything like that, so I'm going. But you do get used to taking those steps into the unknown a bit. And I think mentally we're conditioned a bit to be able to do that. So I think that helps with our recovery. And I definitely was able to draw on some of that and be
a bit more mentally strong because we had that.
Was there guilt involved with your family, with your wife, with your kids? I know that Ed made a big point of when I was preparing for this to talk to you that you're a full-on family man. You take your family very seriously. You spend a lot of time with them. I recently had a guest on who also had an accident, a towing accident. Dad Spencer, a friend of mine out here, he had a towing accident in Minnesota. And he talked about that, just this overwhelm. You feel you're not contributing to the family. You're not helping. Now dinner, you're a patient. You're a baby. You're getting taken care of. It's just especially I think men are not very good at this.
We're not very good at being convalescent.
Yeah. And I think you had to kind of almost mentally turn some of your wanting to take control. You had to turn it off. And sit back and let people do stuff for you. Because otherwise you'll get frustrated. You'll spend, it was, yeah, some of it's, so much of it is in your head and you have to sometimes take a step back and go, no, I have to let these people take over because they know what they're doing. They are caring for me. And, and it is hard, as you say, especially for probably for men that are control freaks. Or I think most, a lot of paraglider pilots are control freaks as well. Yeah. Quite strong personalities and egos, even the quieter ones.
And. It's why we do this sport, it's part of why we do the sport, I think, but yeah, for guilt. Yeah. You obviously feel bad for the family. I mean, I'm so lucky that I've had a wife that's just, she is a pilot as well. So she understands that side of it. That's helpful. But she's been a solid rock through the whole thing. She's been there all the way and supported me and we've obviously we've discussed flying again. Yeah. And she understands that flying is such an important part of our lives that, you know, it's almost, it feels weird that I wouldn't not fly again.
I was going to say, is there, is there, have there been any of those conversations? Is there, you know, in any of the teary moments, has there been any, I'm not going to do this again? I did
at one point earlier on, I was like, well, will I fly again? I don't know. I don't know if I'll fly. And I think, like you said, the guilt thing was very much in there, but you have conversations with the, with conversations with my wife. I've had conversations with the boys as well, because they're old enough, they're teenagers. So we can have those sort of conversations and, and that helps you realize that it's part of you. And it's for me, I'm not sure. Yeah. I'm sure not everybody would come to the same decision and that's everybody's, you know, their own person, but for me, it's such been such an important. Part of my life for 30 years. For me, it would feel weird if I couldn't come back.
I mean, I'm not there now. Okay. Because I think it doesn't feel like I'm ready yet. Physically. Physically. Yeah. Yeah. I'm sort of only walking free K at the moment. Okay. Yeah. Still a bit of an effort. There's some bits of nerve damage in the feet.
When was the accident? Remind me the date. I remember I had sent
me a text that day, but it was September the 15th, so it's been quite a while, but October,
November, December, this has been three, wait, September, October, four months. What is the prognosis? Is it a hundred percent? Is it 80? Where, where did the doctors think you'll get?
I've been told it should be a full recovery. Huh? Great. Although I might get some pain where the pelvis wasn't quite closed properly. Okay. So maybe not doing. Big, huge walks, but yeah, the prognosis is good.
Is this your first, is this your first pound and paragliding? No, I, I did break a vertebrae very early on. Okay. Well, actually in the world cup in Switzerland, many years, like 25 years ago, but that was fair. Yeah. Relatively minor. And the fact that it was a compressed vertebrae, I wore, of course, hard landing. I wore a corset for a few months and that was it. Okay. At the time it felt big, but yeah, compared with what's just happened, I realized it's not that big, but, but it did have, I know it had a, an effect on my flying afterwards as all these things do.
Like I became a lot more careful about landings after the accident.
Yeah. Do you, when you think about flying now, coming back to it or, you know, do you, you know, I'm sure you're kind of envisioned your first flight after this, you know, off some lovely peak in the, behind your house. Is it, you really, is it, is it scary to think about that? Is it, oh, I can't wait. How does that feel?
A bit
of both. I think, yeah, I really love flying and I love the freedom of it. So I can't wait to be back in the air, but I, I know, I'm pretty sure it will be scary that first time. Yeah. I'm a bit nervous about that and a bit, you know, nervous about how I will react having had such a big hit. Yeah. But then I'm also, I've had so many people messaging me about their instances and like telling me about their stories. You know, it gives you hope for your future and you go, if they've done that, I can do it. And that was one of the reasons I was really happy to talk to you about this because a lot of people, I didn't broadcast it much at the beginning.
Cause it was all a bit personal. It was a little bit scary and a bit, I didn't know where it was going. And, but as I've got better, I've put stuff on Instagram and stuff like walking out of hospital and things like that. And loads of people have then messaged me going, it's great to see that. It's really encouraging for me. I'm in the same situation. I've had an accident and it was the same for me. Like Tom was one person that got in touch and Violetta. Her story. Her story with breaking her pelvis, obviously that was close to me and, and Maude Perrin who broke her pelvis last year, the acro pilot, who's now back in the air and seeing these people, you know, overcome it and move on, especially people like Violetta, who's not
only overcome it, but it's now in the world championships, it's competing at high levels on the podiums at high level comps and you, and it helps you move on. And overcome it yourself. It's not so unknown.
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, and, and with, with Violetta, I need to get her on the show about that, but it, you know, it wasn't just one, you know, she, I think she's had six is by my account, pretty major incidents. Uh, not all of them physical, not all of them, you know, uh, ended up in the physical harm, but, uh, or trauma, but still traumatic. You know, it's traumatic going in and, you know, she's really stuck with it. It's impressive.
Yeah. And again, it's the beauty of our sport is we have access to all these pilots that will take their time to talk to you as well. They've been, I feel very blessed that I've had so many people sending me messages that every day in hospital, I was getting messages from around the world from pilots. Some that I knew really well. And some pilots I didn't know very well, just giving me encouragement, giving me. You know, they're, they're blessed, you know, their wishes and it really helps. It really, really helps.
That's interesting to hear. I never know how to approach that. It's always, uh, you know, it's, is it too much? Is it too little? Is it, it's, it's great to hear that those were all received so well. It's nice to hear from
everybody. Yeah. For me, it was really helpful.
Uh, just maybe
feel part of the family again.
Yeah. Cause to
me, paragliding is just one big family and I feel very privileged to have found this sport that gives us that feeling.
I had a kind of a similar complacency type thing that, that ended better in terms of, you know, the, the lack of trauma, but mine was a throwing reserve that wasn't attached. Uh, and I've talked about this on the, on the show before, but it was switching gear late night, you know, coming back from a comp, you know, dark. Didn't want to wake my family, just blew it, just completely blew it. And then it flew the next day, uh, you know, long, long drive and then doing some acro training over the dirt and, and through and wasn't attached, you know, just the most basic, most idiotic mistake there is. And, and then the second part of it was that because I was flying, you know, a different, you know, I'd been on my comp harness stuff and suddenly I'm on my sup air, you know, uh, acro kit.
I just, it didn't flash into my mind immediately that I had a second reserve. So I watched the one fly away from me and went and literally thought, wow, that's funny. And, you know, it's just perfectly deployed reserve that wasn't attached to me, but, you know, had I reacted faster, I did end up throwing my second one, but it took some amount of time. You know, it seemed to me to be forever. It was probably two seconds, but, you know, I was already very low. And I threw the first one. So the second one I've, I threw and I watched it roll out to the end and then I hit the ground. And so it didn't have a chance. It didn't deploy, but it was along the same type of lines that, that, you know, it was the gear switch that, uh, you know, my mind just wasn't.
And ever since then, you know, we always talk about, you need these cheap mistakes ever since then, you know, when I go from a hike and fly to my comp kit to my acro kit, you know, it's this. I do it every flight now where it's, you know, my, my hand goes down. Now I'm on a different bit of gear. Now, this is where this reserve is because it's different. You know, we've done a lot of talks over the years and the magazine has been very good about covering this, that they should all be the same. But until that time, you know, we, we have to just remind our brains over and over and over and over, you know, where this stuff is. You didn't have time for reserve, but it's, it sounds like the, the switching of the gear is, uh, that's gotten me as well. The break thing. Yeah. That's, that's also gotten me, you know, some of us fly a lot of different kit.
Um, and you especially fly a ton of different kit.
But, and it's not something I didn't know about because a friend, a friend of the magazine, a writer, somebody that writes for the magazine, Andy Pag had a big crash in Nepal a few years ago where he'd been flying tandem all season, jumped on his solo wing, forgot the spring travel was much less span, hit the hill and broke his back. And that's, I've always remembered him telling us about that. And so it's not something I didn't know, but yeah, you don't think about it. You need to think about these things.
Got a lot of lessons here. The, the, given the span of your flying and, you know, you had the, the, the one accident in Switzerland and the world cup, this one sounds like kind of complacency, margin gear.
How do you incorporate this? What are you thinking about? In terms of just, uh, when you do get back in the sky, I mean, that sounds like that would be it. Those are all great lessons, you know, we need these, but I
think, yeah, to make sure you're in the moment all the time and think about, yeah, every flight is a flight. Yeah. It's not just a little fly down to go and land. Yeah. Once you're off the ground, the consequences are high if you make mistakes. So you have to treat every flight with respect.
Hmm.
I wonder how it's, uh, how has it impacted your wife's view of flying? Is she less excited about it? Same? Is it not flying
at the moment anyway? Cause she did her ACL last year. She's on a recovery from that, but she's due to start flying before me, I think. So she seems quite up for it. I would, I thought it might affect her as well, but, and I, I'm sure it has, you can't be around accidents and not be affected. Can you, especially when it's people that are close to you and, uh, but she's, you know, she's worked in the industry. She's so she gets to hear about, I mean, we get to hear about a lot of accidents and we, so it's not something we don't know about. I think if you're maybe if you're a weekend pilot, you can maybe ignore that side of it a bit more, but if you're in comps and around, yeah, writing for the magazine, we hear about probably every, lots of the accidents that happen.
So it's not like something we can get away from knowing about.
Hmm. That's interesting. I was just actually talking last night with my wife, not about accidents and not about paragliding, but there's a Dave Chappelle bit in his latest, you know, comedy standup comedy series where he, he starts. He starts talking to a young person in the audience and says, you know, I, I really feel for you because, you know, back in my day, I remember being at school when the Challenger blew up and it was a huge deal, the whole world. And people were, you know, it's, it's like Kennedy assassination, you know, where you were, you remember it, it's a big deal. And now with social media and the news around the world, everybody knows everything. If you want to, you know, you, you.
You have access to everything and you just become Gaza, Ukraine, bad stuff every day, all the time. And, and it's, it's hard to feel much emotion about really bad things. Cause it's, you just, you're inundated, you know, it just kind of, oh, bad, bad, bad, bad scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll.
In, in our sport, unfortunately does have a lot of this. And I have noticed even in myself that's, you know, some. Some things are just, they just kind of brush aside another pound and then there are some like nicknames that really, you get desensitized, that's the word. And there are some like nicknames that just, I think really shake the foundation of, you know, well, if he could get hurt, uh, I mean, and obviously he was taking enormous risk mostly, but not that day, you know, not the day that he went in, it sounded like a pretty reasonable day to go flying. Um, yeah, these, these, these do in a sense. Not set you back, but they grab you, don't they? I mean, they just, whoa. I mean,
it's, it's that realization that if it can happen to him or her, it can happen to everybody.
I think it's interesting what you said about not taking risks. Cause I think that's one of the things that I've maybe struggled a little bit with is the fact that I thought this was a really safe thing I was doing. Right. Yeah. That, the hike and fly thing. That day, those conditions. It was something I did a lot and it was always something I felt was very safe because it was from a known site in a, you know, with good weather always. And it's not, not like flying cross country through big peaks or strong days when it's going off. Yeah. It felt like a safe thing to do. And then still I managed to hurt myself doing that.
So that's,
yeah, I mean, I guess that's the, the, that was a more. A more, uh, articulate way of saying what I was trying to say is that I, in some ways I don't like these accidents more. Yeah.
They do make you think more of them. Damn it, really?
I mean, a really, really good pilot who's very experienced, who's got a ton of years under his belt and, you know, it wasn't, you weren't competing in the X-Alps when it's blowing 60 K an hour. No, it was a perfect day. For a morning, perfect, perfect day. Uh, you know, I, I went in pretty hard and beer on a pretty perfect day. Uh, where, you know, it was just what the hell just happened. And it was,
that's complacency, isn't it? So absolutely.
Yeah. Complacency. It's a chapter in the book. As you remember, you helped me write that book.
That's it. Uh, that's an interesting thing. I mean, for sure we, I spent a lot of time with Jurgen, the safety director, the rebel X ops this year up at trace CMA when we were, you know, we were waiting for Ellie to come through. And so we we'd seen a few athletes come through. We had a long. Chat about this, this very thing, you know, just the, the enormous risks that, that Chrigel is willing to put himself in to, to win. And yet, um, you know, we don't see many accidents at that level we have over the years we've seen accidents, but they haven't been, you know, knock on wood, there hasn't been a bad one. And, uh, it, it is quite interesting. I mean, I've reflected on this a lot that you are taking.
So much more risk and yet you are at much less risk in the race. I believe after doing it, because I could not take that kind of risk a day before the race or a day after the race, pretty much guaranteed. I'm going to pound it because you're, you're just, you're in it and you're, you're, you're, you have this invincibility, which I know is not accurate, but it's, it's a, it's a mental, you are in it. You know, there's nothing else. Yeah. There's no other distractions. There's no complacency. There's no, you're, you're on the, you're on the ball. You're paying attention.
Yeah, I'm sure. I think, yeah, I mean, I've, I've not, I've done some hike and fly races and my experience of them was, uh, incredibly, um, mental mentally draining because your brain is just going all the time and you're on that heightened level while you're flying and. Finding takeoffs and preparing to take off and, but yes, you're taking risks, but because your brain's working that much harder, you, you're taking control of them, taking control of the situation. So you're less likely to have an accident, even though you're in a riskier, riskier environment. Yeah. Yeah.
You don't operate like that normally, do you?
No. And it is interesting. I mean, to, to, in my experience to fly well and to. To cover kilometers, you really want to be more in a flow state. You want to be very relaxed. It's kind of the opposite side of what we're talking about. You know, I, I mean, but then when you're in a flow state, of course you're, you are very, you're letting your system, which knows what it's doing, take over and, and you are incredibly reactive and on it. And your speed is your, but it's, it is interesting, isn't it? Because you don't feel very, you feel very relaxed and almost. You know, when I, when I perform the best, I'm almost asleep. I just, you know, kind of. So
then when
you look back and you go,
actually I was on it, I can see, tell I was on it. Yeah. It was just happening sort of almost back in the subconscious. It is. Yeah.
Right. Slow thinking, fasting.
Marcus, thanks for sharing your story. I really appreciate it. It was probably hard to relive some of that stuff, but I think it's useful and it's a good reminder for all of us that, uh, of what we're doing. Yeah. Aviation's, aviation's dangerous.
Yeah.
You should bear that in mind when you take off. That's why complacency, every flight's a flight.
Yeah. Okay. Marcus, we're going to sign off here, but anything else you want to say? I understand you guys have a nice little promo going on.
Yeah. Just, we'd love people to come and subscribe to the magazine, be part of the family. It's a great. So we just, we hope that it's a great source of information for pilots and it brings everybody together. And at the moment we've got a prize draw going. So if you subscribe by the end of the month, you could have the chance of winning a wing. So we've got, you could have the choice from Advance, Ozone, Gin, or Sape. Whoa. You get to choose your wing? You can choose your wing up to ENC, up to and including ENC. So any wing up to and including ENC from those four brands.
And where do people go to do that? XC
Magnum. Xcmag.com forward slash what? Subscribe? Xcmag.com forward slash subscribe. There we go. And you can see the different options and you don't have to have the paper magazine. You can have the digital magazine if you're on the road all the time. So you can just subscribe to the digital magazine. All the subscribers are going to be in the prize draw. And that includes all the subscribers that have supported us over the years that we're very grateful for. They'll all be in the draw again.
Fantastic. What a. There you go, folks. Go to Xcmag.com forward slash subscribe and begin to win a wing of your choice. Marcus, thanks. I appreciate it. I'm excited for the healing you've had and the healing to come and excited to see you back in the air one of these days. And there's no rush. We've all learned there's plenty of time to partake in this incredible activity. So good luck and yeah, fast healing.
Thank you. Great to speak to you. If
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