Hi there, everybody. Welcome to another episode of the Cloud-Based Mayhem. Happy spring to all of you in the Northern Hemisphere. Europe has been going off. I think it was the earliest 300K out and back ever this season. That's due to climate change and just some good luck, but that was pretty cool. We launched in Riederout, went down past Mont Blanc, all the way back up to the Furka, and back home. If someone could do that in the Red Bull X-Alps, the race would be over in about four days. So congratulations there, and I hope you're all getting some good spring flying. It's just barely turning on here in Idaho. The skiing's been pretty off the hook in the backcountry, so I've been slow to make the move, to make the switch over.
But we've got a World Cup coming up next month in May, and the 25 competition season is certainly on. The Mardi Gras will be starting just as this show drops. My guest today is Christian, a.k.a. Serge Durant. He is over in Austria, but he grew up in Australia, and he is a real-life Maverick. Those of you who are fans of Top Gun, Serge was a Top Gun pilot, became one of the youngest in his early 20s, became a very elite part of that force. He's written a book. Very good book about it that he sent me a couple years ago that we discuss a little bit in this show called Fighter Pilot.
And he's been a hang glider for his entire life. He's been a fan of the show for quite some time, so I got to know him a bit before I actually met him in person. And then he supported Paul Guschlbauer in the 23 race, which I was, of course, doing the journalism thing for. So he and I ran into each other quite a bit during that race. And the last time I saw him was... I was running down from the Cimitosa after Paul had launched and was making his move towards the Tre Cime, and I was heading up to do some coverage there. But his paragliding journey had really just begun then. Spent a year with Paul under his tutelage and got into flying, and then decided he was going to get really serious about it and kind of put his sights on this year's Red Bull XL.
Which we get into and why that didn't end up happening in this show. But he spent the last year of his paragliding life under the tutelage of Paul Tackett. Went down and did a master class with him in Columbia and then decided, OK, let's take this to the next level. He was flying an ENB wing and wanted to start competing in the SRS series, which he then won this year. And so he had some success there, but really was fighting fear and had a lot of nervousness and fear when it came to flying and just wanted desperately to get over it and was having trouble with that.
So he got together with Paul and they did a bunch of acro and a tandem glider. And this is his story about how he got over fear and went on to win the SRS series. And. Incredibly, in just a year's time, he's now flying an ENZO, just flew in the nationals down in Australia and will be flying in his first World Cup this May. So this is a rather incredible story about someone who's had an amazing life and has taken his motivation and passion for aviation to paragliding. We have some really interesting talks here about risk and risk management.
And getting over fear and the importance of mentorship and flying with people who are better than you are. And just keeping the gas pedal down, I guess is what you would say. But I don't know that I've ever met someone as motivated as Serge. It's really impressive. His dream of competing in the Red Bull X-Alps did not happen this year, although certainly could in the future. So we talk about that. Was it a dream? Was it a disappointment or just a learning step in the learning process? And I really enjoyed this. We had a blast as all the talks I do.
We've been planning this one for a long time. And his travels, my travels have made it very difficult. But we were finally able to sit down in, I think, quite a timely manner with the Red Bull X-Alps coming up and Serge's first World Cup coming up. And I'll be over there as well competing in that one next month. So. Fun talk. Very, very interesting person. Enjoy.
Serge, finally. I say that to all the guests. It always takes forever for some reason to line these up. But you travel more than I do. You just come back from Australian Nationals. We were talking about that before we started recording. We will get to that. We've got a ton of ground to cover. I think the last time I saw you in your physical form, you were running down off the Cimitosa with your buddy. You guys were supportive. You were supporting Paul. That was almost two years ago now in the last X-Alps. And I was running up to try to get him. Of course, I missed him, but I got the next few people coming through there. And that was a lot of fun. And I know you had a huge smile on your face. That's a pretty fun race. And I understand you applied this year. So we'll talk about some of that.
And we've got a lot of ground to cover with your recent months of training with Powell. You've had a really interesting year. So. But before we get to that, the first thing I had to ask you was, what the hell is your real name? Because you sent me this book. It was quite a while back, wasn't it? But this is the longest opener I've ever had, by the way. Jump in here. But you sent me this book. You were a top gun pilot down in Australia. It's by Max Serge Tucker, which you can tell me about the play on words there. But it's called Fighter Pilot. It's an awesome book. For those of you listening, I'll have the link up to it in the show notes. But it's pretty hysterical. Yeah. You're you're living in Austria, but you're Australian. And that's I'm assuming that's where your humor comes from. But it's so let's start there.
You've been in aviation since you were young.
Yeah. Great to be here, Gavin. After so long, I started flying. I think my first flight, I was four years old on my dad's back in a hang glider. And that was back in the days when hang gliding was super dangerous. So that was a regalo wing that he built himself. My mother divorced him very shortly thereafter. And I think it might have had something to do with that initial flight on the dad's back. And then I took up professional flying when I left home at 17, joined the military straight away. Avoided the degree in the office, of course, and just went straight into flying. So by 21, I was flying jets. And that's when I started hang gliding as well. And I was torn between two loves. You know, the love for the F-18, which, you know, it's like no other machine, particularly when you're 21 years old.
And you get this hundred percent. Million dollar machine to fly around in whenever you want. But I'd race home from work every day if the sea breeze was on, because I lived in a particularly great part of Australia for coastal hang gliding. And I had an apartment on top of a cliff so I could take off and land right at my own apartment. And I'd fly into the night, you know, till nine, ten o 'clock at night in the dark with silent sticks in the leading edge, setting off UFO reports and then try and set the alarm and get up early in the morning to go back to work and do some fighter flying. So it was a fantastic. Six years on the coast there doing that.
So, I mean, the obvious question is, I always say that if I'd gotten into this sport when you did, you know, late teens, well, you got into when you were four on your dad's back, but definitely wouldn't have seen my 25th birthday. And from the book, I mean, you guys are all your top guns, right? You're you've got unbelievable confidence, but you're young and you're dumb. I mean, you're smarter than most, but because you're flying these airplanes. But, you know, that kind of rocket ship between you and your dad. And your legs cannot be that safe. In fact, there were some there's some really horrible tragedies in your book as well. Good friends. But how did you survive? I mean, you're doing that for a job and your hang gliding. How did you make it?
I don't know. It might have a bit to do with why I am pretty. I try to be a good Christian and I do believe in a God and things like that. That might actually have shaped my belief system. The fact that I got here and got this far. In hang gliding, I never the funny thing was I was quite crazy on the hang glider and I only ever bent two uprights and never damaged, didn't break a finger or anything, which is really quite remarkable. You know, at the same time, I had a mate fly into high tension power lines, blew both his legs off and blow both his arms instantaneously. So yeah, we did a lot of we were really pushing the boundaries. You know, we I made my own car towing system, designed my own trolley. We were the first to do that. And I nearly killed my best mate. On the first toe on that. So we were really at the cutting edge of moving inland and doing it in a way where we didn't have any mountains to jump off.
And that was that was pretty short at the time on the flying side. It's a very unique environment because it's heavily regulated, but not in the sense that the commercial airlines are where you have books and books and rules and regs. It's done very much through a leadership mentor model. So you've got a wingman all the time. When you're a junior, you're the wingman of someone who's very experienced, who's watching out for you as you step up in your experience, you'll take on a junior lead where you'll have a very experienced wingman and you're a junior lead and then you'll work your way right up until you're what we call an ACAT, which is qualified to lead the entire Air Force to war. That categorization from EDC up to A takes you about 10 years, maybe a little bit longer to get up to ACAT.
And it's incredibly competitive. And it teaches you to learn fast and you have to learn fast or you get left behind. In fact, you won't even get through the flying school. Each hour is $120,000 an hour. The last course I did was six months long and $25 million to train me alone. I did it with five other friends, six of us, $25 million each. So they can't afford guys who aren't progressing fast enough. So it's incredibly competitive. And I mean, if you want to talk about a swing, a swing, dick environment, you know, it's, you know, it is like that every single day. And I mean, the recent Top Gun movie, Top Gun number two, I actually took all my paragliding friends to the cinema here in Salzburg, about 20 of us went, we had dinner, we all watched it together.
It was a bloody good night. But they really got that sort of camaraderie pretty good in that it's, it's so competitive and that competitiveness, just like you with your paraglider racing, you know, the more competitive, the better you get. It's like that. Yeah. It's like day and night, you know, we were doing 80 hour weeks. It's pretty much a typical week at work is 80 hours consistently for my whole career. And we're competitive on the ground and we're competitive in the air. And it's a, it's a very, some people don't like it and they, you know, naturally drop out. But the guys who, who thrive in that environment, they absolutely love it. So it's, it really gets you to push the boundaries. And to come back to your question about why I didn't kill myself. I think it's because that mentoring program, some of the guys I flew with were just incredible.
They were incredible human beings. In many ways, I mean, I would say their speed of mind, reflexes, all of those sorts of things you'd think of as a fighter pilot, but then also just the ability to lead a young man. And I mean, I remember I got pulled into, he was my best friend and my boss and I taught him to hang glide and he subsequently died. And that's who I dedicated the book to, JP. And I remember he pulled me into his office and I've done something dumb in the jet, you know, flown low and killed a cow or something like that. I don't remember what the situation was. But it was something that was something that was not authorized. He called me into the office and he said, you know, anyone else I'd probably ground for that and ruin their career, but you've got some real talent and I need to learn how to channel it. So I'm taking that on board as a challenge for me is what he said to himself.
So he took me on as a, like a problem child. And he had to walk this very fine line of training someone who, when they pick up the phone and say, Hey, you need to go into danger at the speed of sound at a hundred feet full of bombs and see if you can get back alive, who are willing to do that without asking any questions. But also during the training peacetime environment, you know, not end up as a smoking hole in the ground. And as I, as you said, Gavin, I buried five really good mates in my career who made some bad decisions. And those decisions, I mean, just to put it into perspective, when we're doing a one particular maneuver called low altitude training, we are at very low altitude. We pull up, we roll inverted. We pull down. We pull up high G into the ground and then try and miss the ground.
Sounds really simple. But if we are more than 1.5, it doesn't sound that simple. We have one, a 1.5 second tolerance. So if we don't put the input in where 1.5 seconds late, we're a smoking hole. So when you're working to those sorts of tolerances with your inputs, um, you don't, you don't have room for people who aren't progressing fast. And that's what I mean about that mentoring program that we did. And probably when we get onto Pell Tucker, it's probably. Probably why I hold him in such high esteem is because, uh, he has a lot of those sort of skills. Naturally is what I found in the year I did with him in that he was pushing me. And as I'll, as I've said to others, the year I did with Pell was far more dangerous and far more exhausting. And it was very brutal as the hardest year of my flying career, the year I did with Pell Tucker.
But we achieved some amazing, we achieved some amazing goals in it, but it was because he was pushing me so hard. And he has a really good ability to push hard. But right to the edge of, of where the risk is no longer acceptable. Um, and I've got many examples of where Pell pushed me and I didn't feel comfortable, but he ended up being right. And I was wrong. I'm quite a conservative pilot naturally, particularly on the paraglider, um, you know, hang glider, I'm more aggressive on or an aerobatic aircraft these days or whatever else I fly. I'm, I'm pretty much, you know, I'll fly them as hard as I can, but on a, on a paraglider, I'm much more conservative. You know? I'm checking everything twice, three times pre takeoff, you know, in flight guys will push really deep. Maybe they haven't got a really good landing area.
They'd feel good. They're going to get a thermal and get out of that Valley. I'll sort of go, ah, I'm going to skip that one. So I consider myself relatively conservative in my decision making compared to other guys. Pell is very aggressive and, but he's also, he was very right on every occasion, even on one occasion where I lost control quite badly. Um, and yeah. Yeah. You know, he, he was right. I was able to get myself out of it, low level on an end zone and, uh, you know, he's assessment of my ability was better than my own personal assessment. And as a guy with, I don't know how many hours, how many years I've got flying now, I've got about 37 years of professional flying. I'm pretty good at understanding where my limits are and things like that because I've been doing it for so long. Um, so I found that really refreshing to find someone like Pell in the paragliding community, who hasn't been through Top Gun.
Yeah. And all the professional instructional schools and things that I went through, who is able to do that. And I've flown with Pell and many of his students, maybe 20 of his other students in gaggle flying, watched him do it with everyone flying from A wings to Enzo's. And I've seen his ability to read a wing, you know, up to a kilometer or two away, visually determine whether that person's got that wing under control and whether that day is suitable for them and make some really good judgment calls. So yeah. He, he, he, he has that innate mentor, um, mindset and that's really how he got me through that year. Just like I was when I was on jets pushing the limit and it wasn't done because we had a whole, yes, there was rules, but the rules can be broken and what you rely on is really good wingman.
So look over their shoulder, keep their eye on you and keep you safe.
Your commander that kind of took you under his wing that, you know, and, and normally would have just said, you're out of here, uh, for that mistake that there's some parallels. There to Maverick, the first film, I mean, I know there's Hollywood, a lot of Hollywood in, in the film, the top gun film in the second one, but how much of that can, you know, for those of us who have just seen the films have no idea what that life and that world are really like, I mean, do you see some characteristics in, in the, in who Tom Cruise was playing in yourself?
Um, look, uh, I mean, that's a stretch. I mean, top gun. One came out when I was in high school and, uh, yeah, obviously it was incredibly motivating and it was only, you know, I was, I left high school literally on the Friday and Monday during the military. So, you know, I was straight in, it was a very motivating film, but you know, I don't want to get anyone misled there. There's a ton of discipline. They don't tolerate fools very well at all. The one advantage I had is I was performing and that gave me a little more leeway. Whereas I think some other guys. If they'd done some of the things I've done, probably would have been given the ass.
Okay. So you were learning fast. You were pushing it, but pushing in the right ways. Look
at 24 years of age, I won the fighter pilot of the year. We only have 60 in Australia and they gave me the number one. It's an award they give every year. So at 24 years of age, one of the youngest in Australia, um, I won that. And um, so I was working really hard and getting good results. And uh, that work wasn't just in the air. It's, you know, we have a ratio of about 10 hours to one hour flying 10 on the ground. I'm in preparation and debrief for every hour in the air. You did two flights a day. It's going to be somewhere like an 18 hour day. Yeah, we were doing three. When I was at the top gun school, when instructing there, we would stay in the cockpit, change students refuel with one engine running bang up for another hop, jump another student and keep the jet running on one like three in a row. And you'd be just in the eight G missions, just absolutely shattered by the end of the day.
Uh, I think on the ground. On the ground is I, I really partied hard in my twenties, um, never during the week. So I never, we just had a no alcohol policy at work, but come Friday with all of that workload and being a young, you know, 21 year old guy with all that workload, uh, it all came out pretty hard on a Friday night, like, and maybe right through to the Saturday and the Sunday as well. So it was, um, Well,
you got to live up to your Aussie reputation. Well, well, yeah. Well,
there was a lot of, there was just a, a really a shit ton of pressure through the week. You know, there was no, you know, you literally, your life was on the line, you, you were pushing yourself to the edge of your mental, psychological and physical boundaries constantly from Monday at six in the morning through to Friday at five in the afternoon. And on Friday at five in the afternoon, there was a bit of a blowout, uh, which was, which I think actually was quite therapeutic in a way.
You've, you've maybe heard the stories about our parties. Yeah. Uh, over here on this side of the pond, after our comps, you know, after our nationals after the wide open and the one in Chelan, and then now my other comp, the X red rocks and it's, it's really become a big part of our community. And it's, it's been really interesting that one of the things we always talk about that makes it kind of so unique and also just such a blowout is, you know, you're spending a pretty intense week with these folks and you know, we're all racing, but we've all got egos. We all care about each other. I mean, it's not high stakes at all. Like what you're talking about, what you were doing defending Australia, but it's, uh, you know, you're risking your life. You're pressing a lot of bar, you're flying over deep terrain and, and you're trying to beat your friends.
And then you get to all come together and have a hug and, and have a good party. And it's, uh, it is quite therapeutic. It's really nice. I
think that's really important that you said that Gavin, because a lot of my paragliding friends, you know, they said to me, Oh, you know, why do you paraglide? You're flying all these other aircraft. I still do. And, you know, the paraglider is such a lovely thing. And I don't think they fully appreciate exactly what you just said. Um, I mean, I've been shot at in three different countries in aircraft and shot down once. Um, I had an accident in an aircraft in Australia. I've had all these things happen in aviation and none of them are at a level of what it, you know, some of my paragliding experiences have been.
That's wild. You know?
So if you get yourself on the lee side of the main ridge of the Alps, uh, and you're trying to do some lee side flying, which I had a really couple of bad days with Pell there, that is just absolutely horrifying where you're just trying to keep the wing open. Um, knowing that, you know, only 50 meters below you is a, is a rock, is a rock face and you can't really afford for that wing to even fold up. You're not really going to be able to recover it. So, yeah, I think the last year, like I said, I did, I'm not exaggerating when I say it was the toughest year of training. I mean, you know, even tougher than my top gun course. I mean, I did not find my top gun course that hard to be honest.
That's, that's what, I mean, how has all those years of being a top gun pilot and, you know, the, the discipline, the, the, the passion, the hours, the, the camaraderie, all the things that go into becoming, uh, such a high level pilot and just in aviation. How did that? Bridge to how you've approached flying racks? Yeah. How, how did that, I imagine that would have a huge impact. We do have a lot of commercial pilots in this game. Um, and they're always talking about the need that we have in paragliding to have more. Uh, check boxes and systems and have it be more systematic.
It's paragliding is incredibly loose. It depends on who you learn it from and where you learn it from. And. You know, here's your license, go off, have, you know, have fun, but you know, good luck. There's a lot of good luck, you know, and, uh, and hopefully we make cheap mistakes. You're not allowed to do that because you can't crash a hundred million dollar plane. You know, they want to be, like you said, you don't want to be a fire hole in the ground. I imagine that would have been a great, uh, history to bring to your free flight aviation or not, or is, or was it a hindrance in
a sense? Well, I think it was a hindrance to, yeah, that's a really good point. Wow. I think it was a hindrance in terms of risk management. Uh, I think it held me back quite a long way. A lot. It held me back for a couple of years because I was applying, you know, that professional pilot commercial aviation thing to it. And it's actually not what's needed. Uh, and that took me a while to sort of unlearn that. Um, what did help though, Gavin was how to learn fast. So particularly when I started training with, um, Paul Gushel. Bow. In, uh, 23 and then pal in 24, um, you know, we only had two years to hit some pretty big goals and, uh, I was fast on the ground and I was slow in the air.
That was my summary of hike and fly of how I was, you know, I'm still pretty fast on my legs and, uh, but I wasn't fast at all in the air. And so that's what I was really focusing on. And pal put this very aggressive plan together, but in order to learn fast, you know, this, I think in the last 20 years, even since I was instructing at the school on the F18, we've really learned a lot of, you know, in the neuroscience of how the human mind works and how you can optimize it. So things like grit, uh, you know, which requires, uh, passion plus perseverance. Um, it's going to be really hard to be a good paraglider pilot. If you don't have some grit, you've got to find that grit, you've got to have a good reason for why you do.
The sport, if it's because you just like watching people float around, that's great. And I'll go for a hike and fly with you every Sunday morning when the weather's absolutely perfect. If you want to go and win the Superfinal, um, you're going to have to have some grit because you're going to have to get through some really tough blockages in the mind at different stages through your progression, whatever they might be. And I'm sure you've had them in, I know you have, I've heard your, I've heard your podcast Gavin, and we all have them in order to get through those mental barriers. You've got to have, you've got to go through those mental barriers. You've got to be able to dig deep. And so you've got to have that reason don't try for why you're doing it. And that's what I say to people. You've got to find a really good reason to have it. Once you've found that, that should give you the passion and it should give you the perseverance to get through those difficult patches.
And then you've got a whole bunch of other, uh, neuro scientific things that we've now learned on how to learn. Um, you know, we'd learn through extraction, not by insertion. So when you read a book, you're putting it into your brain. That's not how you memorize it. You memorize it. It's getting out of the brain. So you've got to read it and then you've got to extract it. There's a whole bunch of stuff there. I would say we were very good at that. Um, but I would also say the last 20 years, we've got even better generally as humans in understanding the human mind. And there's some really good reading that I can recommend to people. I'll give you a list of some, I've got about eight books on how you can learn fast. And I think, you know, when I met pal at the start of 20, oh, sorry, it was the end of
23. I was on a B wing and a year later he had me on the end zone and I was racing it. So that was really fast progression and it wasn't done through being a Maverick or anything like that. Like I said, pal is, if one thing he's very conservative with is pushing his clients too fast because he's had clients have accidents and it really, you know, no one wants that with a client. Okay. Pal takes a lot of care of his clients. But I remember turning up to Brazil, November 23. And my first two-liner was on a photon on a tow in Brazil with 35 kilometer an hour wind with thermals. And I've never done any of those things before. That was my first flight on a two-liner. And we were straight into it. And each day was, you know, 100, 200, 300, 400.
You know, it was an amazing two weeks that we had in Brazil. And that was my first go on a two-liner.
So learning fast, I think, is probably the most important thing that I was able to do. I was able to bring across from the fighter community, as I said, they can't afford people who learn slow. So they teach you some very good techniques and how to progress fast. That helped me over the last couple of years, move very fast through the progression on the paraglider. The other thing I think.
Is there much, let me, let me cut in real quickly. Is there much more to that than just working your ass off?
Yeah. It's actually not just about, it's not just about effort at all. It's learning smartly. So often. Um, look, here's one, here's what, here's a one, um, simple one is when you have a setback and you have something bad, maybe you have a really bad landing. Now, maybe you land in a tree and you go, well, that wasn't part of my plan for today. Okay. Now that can really spook some people and it can set you back. You call them fear injuries. I think it's a great term. One of the key areas we've learned is in the neuro scientific area is how people think about that trauma. If you think about that in a negative way, like I'm a hopeless pilot, I nearly killed myself.
It might happen tomorrow. It's going to directly relate to how you perform today. If you think I
can't do this
negative negative self-talk, whereas if you take it as, um, you know, firstly, you've got to do a very good root cause analysis of that issue. And it doesn't have to be any, anything as major as landing in a tree. Like I say, um, to people, you should have goals. Part of that learning fast is being very good about goal setting. So even if it's just a morning sled ride in winter here, I'll actually, I have a diary and the parrot, every
flight's a training flight, every, every flight goals
that I'm writing, I'm writing out. So my last flight was two days ago. It was cold, a little bit ferny, actually quite a bit ferny. Um, and one of my goals was land within five meters of my designated spot. Yeah. So even if it's just a sled ride, I'm setting specific goals all the way along, and then I'm at it. I'm analyzing, okay, well, I landed 15 short. Why? Because you didn't assess the headwind on landing. Why? What were your wind indicators? Oh, shit. I wasn't even looking for them. I was half asleep. Are you idiot? There was water on the lake. There was fires in Austria in winter. There was leaves on the, okay. So lesson learned, be more alert. How do you get more alert? Well, 10 minutes before landing suck on some Gatorade. Okay. Do some square breathing, oxygenate your brain and start looking for wind indicators or whatever it is. Great. Write it down. I've got my lesson learned.
So even on the most basic sled, right, which isn't like a comp flight or something like that, you can draw so much out. And why that's important is because the biggest failures you have can be your greatest learning lessons if you treat it that way. And then actually what you're actually seeking is those big lessons that you want to learn. Now, you don't want to hurt yourself, but you do want to have like the one I was telling you about in Australia. You know, I had this demon following me around on the paraglider since I started flying it. And I can't tell you how bad it was. In fact, I will tell you. I had this fear of the wind.
Wait, started flying that glider or just flying paragliders?
So when I met with Pal, I said, look, I want you to teach me how to fly fast. We sat down, we had a meeting, we had a couple of meetings about it and Pal took it under a lot of consideration about where I was, where my goals were. And my goals were to make egg silks within two years, which is obviously a very big goal. And particularly when I was on a B wing, right? So some would say that's quite ridiculous to say that. But just
rewind a little bit. But further, how did you choose, because you were working with Paul, that's when we started chatting together and you did, you were his supporter in the X-Alps. That was obviously because you had your eyes on maybe doing the race back then. But how did you choose Pal?
Okay. So the point we were talking about was fear injuries and how we get over them. And I was going to talk about my fear and how Pal helped me get over it. I chose Pal because of his speed in flying. So, you know, I like to watch. I like to watch live a lot of the PWC races and you can learn styles. It's hard to learn them if you're not flying with them, but I'd also, uh, I'd done an XC masterclass down in Columbia with Pal and
I could
see this level, this massive level in difference, even with other good pilots around and how he moved through the sky. It was like, he was in a totally different league. And so I approached him and said, look, um, oh, and I think also when I was supporting Paul Guschlbauer for the X-Alps, I mean, you're on the tracker. 24 hours a day. And I'm watching the different guys move through the Alps and I could see the guys who were at that really high PWC level had a distinct advantage and the guys who were at that level. So I approached Pal and he said, yep. Okay. And we sort of went through where I'm at and I told him where I was at, which was very basic, including this seriously bad fear with this demon that was sitting on the back of my shoulder, chasing me everywhere that I flew in a paraglider.
So I'd had, you know, 30 years of hang gliding and I don't have any fear on a hang glider and I've still, I still hang glide and I drag it out and throw it inside out and love it. Yeah. Don't have any fear. Even if I haven't flown it for two years, I'll jump in it and turn it inside out. The paraglider is, it was a really different kettle of fish for me. And he said, all right, we'll fix that. We'll fix your fear. We'll go for a tandem flight and we'll do some SIV at Gerlitz.
Well, where, where was it? Where was the, where was the bag? The guy on your shoulder coming from? Do you know what, why, why did you have that fear? Had you had a bad incident or was it just, no, I hadn't had a bad line, something that collapsed. Okay. I'd
done a, I'd done an SIV with jockey down in Turkey and I just, you know, it's sort of, it's these horror stories that you hear from people, you know, the wing folds up close to the Alps and then you're in.
Okay. So
this thing was haunting me, Gavin, like, and occupying my mind. So instead of flying around looking for leaf litter, bugs, shimmering leaves and finding thermals, I'm just flying around scared of my own wing. So Pell said, oh, look, we'll fix that. I've had, I've had students like that before. We'll go and do one flight on the tandem and we'll get that knocked over. So we went to Gerlitz and we jumped on the tandem. We put it into a backfly. He said, okay, it's yours. A backfly. We came out of it. We did a couple more. He said, okay, you're right to go now by yourself. I said, mate, no way. I think I'm more scared than ever now. He says, bloody hell. It's crazy. He said, all right, we'll go do another one. We did another one. We did another one. We did three runs that day. I said, and I'm more scared. I said, this is terrible. We did three days of this. So what he said would just be one run and maybe three or four stalls.
We're on three days, four runs a day, and I am freaking getting worse and not better. And he said, look, you're ready to go. You're handling it well. But it wasn't about the handling. It was the mental aspect. In my mind, I was on the verge of not handling it well, and I just couldn't get over this barrier. Anyway, I woke up on day four. And I said to myself, you're an absolute pussy. You need to get over it. And I said that to Pell. Like, he had the tandem there. I said, no, I'm going to go by myself today. He said, oh, what happened? And I said, I don't know. I think I've just got to grow up and change my mindset. So I took the C-wing up. And since that day, I mean, I do SIV here over my own lake here in Austria by myself. And I don't have any fear of it, really, anymore. But the fear I had, so come back.
So I'm happy to go doing SIV by myself now. And that was a great inclusion. We just started that early on in the progression with Pell. And it really got the minds. And I'll tell you how good it was, Gavin. I did Thursday with – sorry, I did Wednesday, Thursday, Friday with Pell. I raced Saturday in the board air race. And I got seventh outright, won the master's division. It was the best result I'd had. And all it was was the mind wasn't in panic mode. I was actually flying properly for the first time. Can
we – let's drill into that just a little bit. So you do the three or four days. You
do the three or four days
with Pell on the tandem. And you're doing multiple runs. And it's not helping. And then you have this kind of self-talk. Listen, man, come on. Get over this. What exactly was it? Is it – because Jeff Shapiro talks about that we've got – all it is is this irrational fear that's bouncing around between our ears. So we just got to go in there and get rid of it.
I think it is irrational. And I say that as – I was the risk manager at Emirates Airlines. Okay? The biggest airline. And I'm pretty good at risk management. So I know all the numbers and I know all the stats. And what I was fearing was totally irrational. So it was a racing mind, out of control, emotional response. It wasn't rational. And how I fixed it – and I still do it sometimes now if I get it, if there's a particularly bad day – is I've worked a lot in war zones. Okay? And like about a dozen of them. And there's times in those. There's moments where you have to do things which are incredibly scary and you just have to grit your teeth and do it. And that's – I've heard you use the term X-Alps is like going to war.
And when I first – do you remember saying that, Gavin?
Oh, yeah. When you said that the
first time, I went – in my mind, I went, I wonder if Gavin's actually been to war. But now that actually is a method that I use is like, okay, it's incredibly rough today. You're on the edge of losing control of the wing. Grit your teeth and get into this now and do it. So in the same way where you might be in a conflict zone and you have to do something to live, to get through it, it's the same mentality that I use now. And, yeah, a bit of breathing sometimes to calm myself down or whatever. But I haven't – the last bad sort of moment I had like that was I think September last year, which was in the main spine of the Alps. Pal and I were deliberately doing some leaside flying on the main spine. I was getting my – Ass handed to me, okay?
It was seriously bad. And we landed and I said, are you serious? And he said, Serge, that's a seven. X-Alps 23 was 11 out of 10. You just flew a seven. I said, oh, you've got to be shitting me. You know, this is – and I was – we went up and did it the second day, same conditions, and I had the same result. And I found those two days really hard to get my mind over it. And I actually considered quitting the sport after those two days. That was September. It was that rough and violent. But then – and I think a bit had to do with when we lost Timo last year. Pal and I were there with the French. We raced day one with them. We jumped into their race. And so we were there when the prang happened. And that – Maxime was there.
And all the guys were obviously very upset. I didn't know Timo. But the circumstances in which he had his accident is something that I have had concerns about, which is flying below my reserve height. Right? Full bar near a cliff. Okay. I don't – in fact, below 150 meters. So I use – on my Vario, I have 150 meters set, AGL. That's what I know. I can put the thing – my wing into a back fly, clear it, get out, and keep flying. So if I'm below 150, I'm not going to try and get the wing out if it goes crazy. I'm going to go for instantaneous reserve throw. And I've been using those numbers. And – And that's one of the reasons why I'm a lot more – I think I'm a lot more conservative because I've been in races and I've lost positions with guys that – you know, I can see their shadow.
They're freaking six feet on the cliff. And I've seen their leading edge tuck, you know, and then come off bar and watch the pod shadow come right underneath the pod. And I'm like, oh, man. Why? I mean, I'm 150 meters and I'm in 10th place. I'm quite happy to finish in 10th place in this race and not be doing that to myself, you know. And I think – You know, the risk management is one of the things that has held me back, like I said to you before. But the learning fast has certainly helped me bringing that across from fighters. And the other one I would say, Gavin, is just when you're flying, things like navigation, weather, communication, like I don't have to think about those because I've been doing them for a long time.
That's really helpful. So that does
free the mind up. But on the fear one, I still had this demon sitting behind me. So, okay, I've been doing some good SIV by myself on the C wing. And then I moved to the Enzo. And I've got this fear on the Enzo because of the aspect ratio that the tip's going to go under, wrap around the A's. It's going to be a big bag and we're going to go into this death spiral. And I'll be unconscious when I get my reserve out. Okay. So this is in the back of my mind. And at the nationals in Australia, we had some really hot conditions there. So it was 39 degrees Celsius every day. I'm sorry. I don't know what that is in your gauge. That's just hot.
That's just really hot. Bloody hot.
And guys who'd been doing those nationals – it was my first nationals. I've not flown much in Australia. But there was guys there who'd done it 10, 15 years saying it was the strongest conditions. You know, we were getting constant plus 8 thermals and spikes of us up to plus 20. Gee. Multiple collapses, reserves getting thrown and things like that. And sure enough, pre-start, I'm at cloud base. I'm just dominating the gaggle and I'm ready for, you know, we're just a few minutes before start. And I just get a bit of a beep, beep, beep up to cloud base. Bang. The left wing comes under, wraps around the A's and within 180 degrees upturn, I'm full, down planing with max G on the wing. I took one look at the reserve handle. I obviously had lots of altitude and I said, no, I'll get this thing out. So I back flew the Enzo out, cleared the tips, flew, great start and actually had a good race.
And that was the demon that had been haunting me. And actually, it ended up, you know, I was in a sub with two reserves and all of those other levels of redundancy and didn't need to use any of them. And actually, I was able to do it just through some SIV. And that was sort of the last demon. And that doesn't mean I don't go flying and still get scared. I do. But what I'm saying, it's not debilitating now. So I'm going to come back to the main lesson learned for me. If I knew what I knew now and I started this sport, so I did my course in 2018. I'd put it down until COVID didn't touch the wing. In COVID, I started flying, just doing basic hike and flies. Then 23 was solid training with Paul and 24 solid with pal. So really two hours of two years of solid training. But if I knew now, I would do what we did in the military.
So we never let a guy go solo in an aeroplane in the military unless he can spin it and get it out or stall it and get it out. But in paragliding, we do it another way. You do your 40 high flights, then you go flying and you, if you want, you can go thermaling, do whatever you want and you can spin it and you can stall it and you don't know how to get it out. So if I knew what I knew now, I would do my high flights and I would immediately go and do SIV until I could do it with my eyes shut. And then I would start going cross. Instead of the way I did do it, which was a couple of years of cross country before I was really feeling comfortable with the wing being out of control.
I've got several things I need to ask you, uh, cause you covered a lot of ground there, but I wanted to start with the two days you flew with pal that were pretty freaky that were in the lead that he said were a seven and you know, in the X ops and 23, you know, the spectators all saw a race that had unbelievably good. Good weather, right? You and I were out there on those days where Maxine landed and he was kind of in tears and he was landing backwards and you know, it was peaking over 60 K an hour, uh, going through the lakes district by Bell and Zona. These were not recreational paragliding days. I mean, it was incredibly windy and, and, and, and very sketchy in my, I'm sure pal talked about this with you.
If I had gone flying with you guys. Those two days, I probably would have felt pretty similarly because you're not in the race. You know, there's a very different place you get in your head. I'm just wondering what pal said about that because he's got this incredibly long acro background. And so for a lot of us who have been flying XC for a long time can look at that and go, he's definitely got an advantage because he's got this incredible gift of recovery. He knows what the wing is going to do before. Does it more than most and, and just this ability and that, that translates to all kinds of skills on the ground, launching, landing, top landing, you know, that's given him a huge advantage all those years, training really hard acro that the kind of training you've been doing the last two years, but for years for acros is a competitive acro pilot and all the films and master acro and everything else.
But I would imagine even pal on, you know, on a 10 out of 10 day, when you're just flying is different than, than on a 10 out of 10 day in the X-Alps, you just, I, if at least for me, the, the second that gun goes off in that race, it's pretty hard to get me scared until the, you know, and then the next day after the race, I go out in conditions that were 70 % of what they were. I just flown the day before and I'm shit scared. It's just interesting. Your mind goes to a place while when you're in the zone like that, you're in the zone and it's this combination of all the factors. Of going to war, right? It's you're in it. You got to perform. You got to do it. You don't have any time to think about that shit.
You don't have any time to think about now, man, I'm scared. This sucks. You know, it does there. You can think like, wow, this sucks. I've been in a lot of situations, the X-Alps where I'm going, man, I'd like this to be different, but that's different than being scared. It's interesting. I, and I don't know in all the times I've trained for my four campaigns, I could never get there in training ever. You know, I could get close, but I could get current, I could get really fit. I could go fly in some nasty stuff, you know, like we hear Chrigel doing all the time, but, but that switch, I could never find it unless I was in the race.
Yeah. So, well, what I would say is like, firstly, I'm really unhealthily competitive. Let's say that. So if you take me for a training day, Gavin, I'm not going to let you beat me in one thermal or glide one foot longer than me. Even if it takes me a year. It's training, right? So I have a, and I'm not going to say that's entirely healthy, but that's just how I'm wired. So on that particular day, I'd never experienced the wing move around as violently as it was. Okay. So yes, I've had them going forward and back and all those sort of things, but this was moving so erratically and so fast. And I felt like I was on the edge of losing the wing. Now I never lost it. I didn't even lose a tip. But again, in my psychology, I felt like I wasn't up to it. I was saying, Hey, you've got this, you know, you're managing it.
Well, let's keep going. We're going to freaking do the whole valley. Um, and I, in my head, I'm like, dude, I don't think I can make it across the next crossing. Right. Like, so it was such a big difference between his observation of me and my perception of me. Um, that's why, you know, the wingman mentor concept. And I really recommend that to a lot of junior pilots, you know, is to go for, okay. I came into the sport, a lot of professional background, a lot of hang gliding and things, but you need to go flying with people who are more experienced than you. And then the people who are. You're not just there to tell them, Hey, it's good for takeoff. You should be watching them in flight, watch them, how they're handling the wing. Have you got them into conditions that are a bit too strong for them, which goes, go land and have a beer and we can try it again tomorrow. So it's, you should take mentoring as a really, I've got a couple of junior pilots at the moment that I'm working with, and I take it with a lot of responsibility.
I'm not going to say I'm good as pal. He's brilliant at it. Um, and how he can see a wing moving over the top of someone. But I think, I think that those particular conditions. On those two days we had, yeah, they were awful because of how chopped up it was. So strong thermals cut up, which means the wings really aggressive, not just strong thermals, like we had in Australia, just really very messed up. I was ready to sort of say this sport's not for me, you know, because I think it's, we were in some very difficult conditions that day. And, um, if the wing had gone, there was no way I was going to be able to recover it. Um, we had some good chats about that. I'll also come back to the point you made about Excel. Yeah. So Gavin, I know three of the top guys that finished in the top, um, 15 without mentioning names and all three of them were ready to quit the sport after Excel was 23.
They'd all made that decision because of the condition. I don't
think is that, uh, you know, in my experience, Serge, I don't think that's that uncommon, uh, you know, there, there were, I had campaigns in 21, the weather was atrocious and, you know, it was an amazing experience as it always is, but there were some serious self-talk after that one going.
So do you think
this is unreasonable
experience? So Gavin, is it because of the, the danger of the flying that people have made that decision or because of the physical exertion where they've gone, I'm not going to do another Excel.
Oh, zero, 100 and zero. But the physical is not, I've loved all of that. That's never been an issue. I mean, in 2015, there was serious pain because I didn't feed myself. Right. And that's a whole other story. But, um, no, I don't mean, I don't mean. In any way, the discomfort or the pain or that side of that, that's to me has been awesome. I've loved that part of it. No, it's the, it's the, it's the, just the pure absurdity of the risk. You know, like you're talking about that seven out of 10 flight. There are days that, I mean, in 2015, there were multiple days all day like that, you know, and Tom, the door or a Toma got his face torn off and Tom, the door, the door broke his arm and got helicoptered out.
And Michael Gabbert quit the race. Michael Vichy went in the lake. You know, throwing was, or he's one of the best comp pilots in the world. You know, it was just ridiculous how much wind we were flying in. And so, yeah, no, it's that, but, but again, for me during that rate in 2015 was great. It was all, I mean, it was just incredible, but I mean, the day after, if you'd asked me to go back into St. Moritz and fly what I did down to Bellinzona, no way. I don't, I don't think I could have done it. It's interesting. It's just where your head gets because of the race. And I just. All the things that go into it. I don't know.
Yeah. So we spoke at the start of this call about grit and the ability for passion and perseverance.
And, you know, if you've got it, you have, you got the grit to race. And obviously when you're racing, you've got more grit, right? Because there's the stakes are higher. You've trained harder for it. You're super passionate. You're perseverance. I mean, you're just going to run until your feet fall off, right? If you have to, if it's a rainy day. So you do have that when it's training, we lose. We often can lose that. That's, and I guess that's a bit about the point I was making, you know, when I got to the end of the SRS season and there was some guys who would, you know, having a bit of a sledge, having a bit of a go at me in the, in the landing field about, oh, well, you know, if you've got a coach like pal and if you've got the right gear and if you've got the money, you know, you can win the SRS without any idea of where I'd started the year with pal, which I was just absolutely shit scared.
A flexible wing, you know, and, um, and that's why I say it was the most difficult thing I've ever done is the flying was probably as technical, you know, in terms of the feel of the wing and how, how you handle the wing is probably, you know, that's probably on par with flying an F-18 well, you know, that's, you've got to have skill and you've got to learn to fly it well, but the psychology doesn't come close. You've got an injection seat in an F-18, you might pull the handle and then you're just, you're under your reserve. Um, the power. And the proximity of the ground is, is, you know, it's next level when you're in those sort of conditions, like we were just talking about.
Amazing. I'm curious, a couple of things. When you first approached pal, was it, Hey, this is where I want to be in a year. I mean, did you just say, this is my goal. I want to get in the X-Alps and he created this whole program or did you guys kind of fiddle fart around in the beginning? And then he, he realized what he had in a client and went, okay. You're going to, you'll take as much punishment as I can throw at you. This is going to be really hard. It was a chicken or the egg here. What happened?
Well, one of his great traits, he's a very honest person. In fact, he put up a post at the end of the SRS when I won and he spoke about the year. He sort of described it and he actually got a, he got, he got some real heat from different people about that post. Cause in that post, he mentioned, you know, in one year he took me from a B wing to an Enzo. And again, there was no. Understanding what that entailed. I mean, that was, uh, more than 250 hours of competition flying together on the radio team, team flying 250
hours of comp flying in a year. That's amazing.
Yeah. Of comp flying and comp preparation flying. So we'll go here and do a week of comp prep and little, uh, some training and then we'll race and things like that. So at the start, um, in, in fact, when he put that post up, Gavin, he said, oh, you know, I thought I'd met a guy who was having a midlife crisis because of my age. And, and, you know, I, I understand that. And so he was a little bit hesitant at the start, like, you know, what's up with this 50 year old guys, you know, punishing himself this way, but then he got to know me and he got to know my background and, and I've done a lot of, uh, competitive sports and, you know, like, uh, ocean racing and sailing and triathlon, iron man, things like this. So it's always been a part of my life since I was a teenager.
Um, and I don't see myself in that. I mean, obviously as you get older, you have to calm it down a bit and you can't be as hard on yourself, but, um, he got to know me and he, as I said, we'd already done a one week masterclass and he actually, I'll tell you that there's a funny story behind that. So I turned up in Columbia for the first time and I am super pumped, right? Like I'm going to go and do this masterclass. Now this is before I've set any goals for XL training. I'm just going to learn how to fly cross country. So at this stage, my biggest flight I've ever think I'd done. It was like a one 20 down at Bassano or something like that. Um, I don't really know what I'm doing. Um, but Peltuck, that seems to have a good background. I'll go and learn from this guy. So I get there and I'm sitting there in the pre-brief with my diary, making all the notes and he picked up on it straight away that I was taking it.
I was a different, yeah, I wasn't, I wasn't drinking at night. Not that I don't have fun. I mean, anyone who's been on my teams knows I have a lot of fun, but I was really sort of serious, but I'm so serious. Gavin, we get into the first gaggle, right? We launch. And I'm doing the right, no, one's going to beat me. And straight away, pal is, he's cloud based. Okay. I'm scratching around at Hill, like what's going on here? You know, clearly I can't thermal. Eventually I get into the core and that's it. I'm going to beat everyone. And I keep going and I keep going and I keep going. And now I'm in cloud suck and I'm boom. And I'm straight into this big queue and then I have a collapse and I come out in a spiral through the middle of the gaggle back out through it. And that was my first day with pal on my first masterclass and we got back to the debrief. He said. Can you please not do that to me again, as you're instructing that.
And so that was, he's, he's limited exposure to me was that right. And a bit of flying that week. Oh my God. I mean, I'm signing up for this guy for a year of this, right? So he's like, he's like, he's a bit hesitant. Like, you know, what am I doing here? And then he saw, I was serious, you know? So we, we went to girl, listen, uh, I started results in hike and fly, started to improve and he could see that I was putting in on the ground and in the air. And then. He put the big program together. So once you've got the SIV done, we went to Brazil, we went and did big distance. We had a week at June to pull up with ground handling. We sent the SRS as our race campaign, five weeks of racing throughout the year, and then different areas of training, um, generally in the Alps, um,
and Brazil and just following the weather and following the, um, the race, uh, circuit. And, um, honestly, I got to November of this October. This year, we had, we had a, a month in Brazil, it was meant to be a month. And I got to the two week mark and I was just done. I mean, we'd done one year together and now I'm on the end zone. I'm on the submarine with the end zone, pushing out by myself across Brazil, pals bombed somewhere and I'm like, oh, I'm, I'm exhausted. So I called it, I actually had to go back to work after two weeks, which is a bit unfortunate, but you know, it was an amazing journey to be flying across Brazil, myself on an end zone. So in a submarine a year after we'd done that first tow in Brazil on a, my first two liner.
So it was a really amazing reel. Um, and I think, you know, the, I think the big takeaways for me, Gavin, is that the fear of the wing, which I think everybody has, and I'll come back to something else. You said, you said, you know, Pell's got an amazing feel and he could see the wing before it moves. I mean, that's one of the things he, like the difference between doing an SIV recovery and doing acro huge. Huge difference here. So huge SIV recovery. I hear it. I feel, you know, the, the line goes light. I look up, I make an assessment. I put an input in when we were doing it together. I mean, he's looking at the internal structure of the wing to see the internal structure change for when he makes his next input. So even before there's no shooting, the wing hasn't moved.
It's getting prepared to deflate. So there's a lot of, um, that's why it's so good. Actually, he's, he's looking, he's reading the internals of the wing. And seeing the wings pressure and it's next move before it moves. Um, so I think that, you know, that year to go from not even being able to fly a V wing to get some great results in racing, to actually take out the SRS series, which is a real surprise. I mean, actually that was a huge surprise to be honest, because the first race I did, the first SRS race I did was in Columbia at the start of the season down in January there. And the first race.
I came in nearly last because I missed a turn point by 50 meters. I came in second overall, but I'd missed a turn point by 50 minutes. So I didn't know how the app worked. I mean, that's how freaking hopeless I was. You know, apparently it makes a noise and goes, you know, as you hit the turn and I'm like, I'm just following the gag all around. And then I put the speed bar down and I came in a good result. But so if I, if I hadn't actually missed that 50 meter, I missed it by 50 meters. If I hadn't done that, I would have taken the first competition. I've been second place overall, but I got 13th overall for that first comp. And then we just kept improving throughout the year. Um, and I think, um, and, and then in between the races, we were doing dedicated training. And like I said, it was over 250 hours of race training with pal in one year, which was really heavy load.
I mean, it's, you know, for everybody listening, this is, you know, certainly, uh, you know, for people who get into the sport when they're in their twenties, this is the dream. Right. To go spend a year with one of the most famous pilots in the world and, you know, be led around the sky and have training and training and training and, and feedback. I mean, this isn't a one week masterclass that some people get a chance to do. So obviously, you know, an incredible opportunity, uh, you obviously got the resources to do that, which is terrific, but it's leads to the obvious question is why now? Yeah. I mean, it's, it's interesting, you know, you and I are pretty close in age, I believe, uh, you know, we're not absolutely spring chickens here anymore.
You know, I, where are you finding the energy for this and the passion for this? It's fascinating.
I don't know the answer to that. That's, that's a really good question. And I've always had it since I was a kid, you know, and I am like, still, if you get to know me well, like I'm still quite immature at times when I want to be, and I can be mature at times. So, you know, you can, I can balance my maturity with the environment. Um, but I still am like a child with my motivation, um, for my flying, just like I was when I had my first glider flight, my first powered flight, my first jet trainer flight, my first Hornet dual flight, my first solo. And you get those big buzzers and those big rushes. I'll be honest with you. Two days ago, I just did a, uh, it wasn't really, it was sort of a semi sled ride, churning, windy, shitty early spring day at my home site.
But to me, it was like the most remarkable thing. Like seriously, I, I, and, and it sort of comes back to that point you raised before Gavin about, I don't think a lot of paraglider pilots truly appreciate how incredibly amazing it is what we do. Like if you know anything about the Goldilocks zones across the universe, right? Where water is between freezing and a hundred degrees with the web telescope. Now we've looked at all of them and with AI, we can scan them all. And we found some planets, but there's no atmosphere, et cetera, et cetera. So basically. When you hike a hill at the right time of day and you step off onto a bubble of warm rising air, it's the only place in the universe. And you were the only person on the planet that stepped off and got into it. And then you got transported for a couple of hundred K across the planet.
And then you land. That is
Goldilocks. That is
Goldilocks. Yeah. It's, it's an incredibly unique thing that we do. And I'll, I'll actually, I'll, I'll frame it another way too. If you look over the history of mankind, all right. Paragliding. It's like this. Absolutely. Tiny, tiny piece at the end over the, you know, but go back to the Neanderthals, right. We're out there hunting you and I was, you know, out for a couple of days and we spear a deer and we're carrying it back to the tribe and we're exhausted, right. We haven't eaten for days. Cause we did, you know, been hunting the tribes hungry. We finally land this deer there and we go, here you go. They say, well done boys. And the whole time we're looking up and we're fine. We're watching these vultures fly backwards and forwards over the mountains that you and I are hiking up going, oh my goodness. Wouldn't that be fantastic. And we love them so much. We, you know, we deified them.
They, we turned them into gods, you know, we started to worship them. Right. And we always wanted to be like them. And then we had some crazy guys make some wings and they started to jump off hills. And then a couple of brothers who were bicycle mechanics in your country thought they could get some dead seagulls from the beach and make some wind tunnels. And then they, they did it right. But the whole time, none of us in that, like over the bulk of history, no one was thinking about standing in the rear. We were just sitting in a bar of the A380 sipping on champagne, traveling at Mac 0.9 around the planet. That's not, that's not what we were doing. We were looking up at the vultures going, I just want to be able to do what they can do. And paragliding is that, and we are so lucky to be alive now. I mean, Wilbur and Orville and every other great aviator that has lived before us would die to be able to walk up a hill with a 10 meter wing on their back and jump off and go for a flight.
They would give their lives for it. Right. Right. But we happen to be alive at a time when the technology. Many,
many, many, many, many people did.
Yeah, yeah. Just getting us
to this point.
We have to be alive where we can do that. And I, I don't lose sight of that on any day that I go flying. It is, you know, it's something that I really treasure. And that's where I get my motivation from. It's just a deep appreciation for how unique this time is in the history of man, where we can be like a bird.
Very well said. This period you had this last year. When you had the two flights where he went, not sure this is for me.
Talk about pressure. I mean, in, in, in one way you've given yourself this incredible gift of a year, but it's also, there's some pressure there. You were signing up, you're trying to make the X outs. You're trying to get in the, the biggest thing there is in this sport, in my opinion, in any sport, it is the sweetest race there is. Uh, was there, were there times this year? Yeah. In Brazil, you're exhausted where you're going, am I chasing the right thing? Is there been any doubt?
Brazil's when it, Brazil was when the first time I questioned it after two years, two years of almost full-time training. So I mean, I'm a, I'm a dad, I'm a husband, I've got businesses in four different countries around the planet that I try to run and, and then I fly. Yeah. So I'm busy. Um, I was pushing. And the other thing I think not to lose sight of. I was, I was pushing on the ground as well. So, you know, I was doing ultra marathons and stuff, so I'm doing all the physical training on top of all the, um, uh, flight training with pal. So, but I've got a really good level of like, I bring it back to that grit. Um, and there's an excellent book by Angela Duckworth that I would recommend to anyone that's listening that wants to know how to develop their grit.
It's a really great study that she did on, on how to develop it in your children and then had it all the way through to yourself. Um, and I have a very high level. I go, I don't jump into anything unless I really want to do it. And then when I really want to do it, I'm almost ridiculous about how I approach it. Um, so that grit did me very well throughout the couple of years training with Paul and pal. Um, and I'd say right up to the end there in Brazil where that was, I mean, Brazil is exhausting in a different way because if you're doing a long flight, uh, the roads are terrible, you know, and you've got to land and get back and you're driving through the night and you're getting back at two, three in the morning, a couple of hours sleep. Yeah. Getting up again, six o 'clock in the morning, you're setting up seven, you know, we launched every day before seven and got away this year, which was phenomenal.
That was our goal was we did a big statistical analysis of every flight over 500 on X contest. And in that statistical analysis, we knew the start window we needed to achieve. We needed the end window, we needed the average. So we were pushing that every day. And that was a really good achievement this year is we're always first off, you know, everyone's standing around. Is it working? Is it working? Is it working? We're always bang, bang off and go. Um, so we had some really good early starts this year, but that can be very exhausting backing that up day after day and keeping, keeping your mind fresh enough where you're responsive enough on the wing. If something is to go wrong and then, you know, the thermals in Brazil, from my experience and I've done four weeks of flying down there at different times of the year, you know, they're soft thermals, they're tropical soft thermals, but this year we noticed it was chopped.
It was, it was some rough days there. We hadn't, and that was the wind was coming in and chopping them. And so that was a little bit, um, you know, we were, it wasn't as easy as the previous trips we had done. Um, but I think that was the first time I started to feel exhausted by that stage. I've done over two years of nearly, you know, like 40 hour weeks of training, I'd say on top of my job, on top of my job. Okay. That's why. That's phenomenal,
man. That's so, and what's the result of that? I mean, where did, where did you, where did you, I mean, are you, are you fired back up or are you going to keep chasing it like that? Where do you go from here?
Well, I just got back from the two weeks of racing the Enzo down in Australia and I, oh man, I'm in love with this new wing. Like, I mean, talk about a step change that things freaking phenomenal. Um, so yeah, it's sort of rekindled my, I mean, I took a good break. I took a month off. I took a month off after Brazil and I didn't fly for a month. I just had to really, um, let the, you know, let the, let the brain recover. I'd been pushing, like you said, you know, do you ever get tired? I'd say it was probably chronic, but I was doing a really good job of managing it and I've had a lot of experience doing that, but I gave it a good month off and then I started getting back into it, set the schedule for this year. So this year looks like I got a PWC wildcard to Spain, which I'm really excited about. That'll be my next race. That'll be on the Enzo.
Uh, I've got. Okay. The board air races. So I'll race all three of those in Austria, the three high compliance, I'll head across to Brazil for the trans cup of Java. I got fourth there, um, in 23 and, um, I wasn't racing well, like I said, I hadn't done the hell tuck outs crazy year. So I'm looking forward to going back there. I love Brazil, love the people. And that's a really cool race. Um, that one, um, great community down there, best hike and flight community, I think in the world, the Brazilians are just mad for it. They just. I love them.
Yeah. So Serge, I know that you're one of your big goals with working with pal and also working with Paul, you know, the last time I saw you supporting him was getting in this race that's starting here in a couple months, the 2025 Red Bull X-Alps that didn't happen. Was that a, was that a big hit mentally piss you off? What, what, and, and, and how did you handle it?
Uh, no. I think, I think we were pretty well prepared for that. I mean, when you would set a big goal, um, and I also had prepared a good backup and that was something I learned back in the military. Um, so I think it's probably a good little discussion there on, you know, the midlife crisis and how that's, um, probably inappropriately coined. So the midlife crisis is typically, you know, the Western male is raised to provide for the family. He gets to about the middle of his life. And that has been achieved. His children are leaving home. They've been paid for the house has been paid for. And at that time in his subconscious, uh, the analogy there is that he has finally got to his summit. So if you imagine you've been hauling your ass up a month of, uh, acclimatization to get to the top of Everest, you get to the top magnificent view, but at the subconscious level of the male mind, it looks down in every direction.
And at the end of that descent, it sees its own mortality for the first time. And so the young man who's fearless, reckless can never hurt himself, you know, can do every dangerous sport. The subconscious realizes it's coming to an end and now it reels back and can rebel. And in that rebellion, it takes many forms, but I think in the most sort of cliched version of the midlife crisis of a, is a guy who, you know, trades in for a younger model wife, dyes the hair, starts dressing crazy. He's nightclubbing at 50, et cetera, et cetera. Now. I said to you, it's inappropriately named and that's because it's not really a hedge to an age in life. It's heads to an accomplishment in life. And depending on how your life transpires, that can be early or later than midlife.
So to me, it was around 27. I had, I had the top gun. I'm sitting there as my summit. It was my Mount Everest. And so I was a teenager with my ring bit off, got there, got out the other side and nothing could compete with it. So I had a big, a big fall from there. So that was quite hard to pick myself up again. And I learned a really important lesson. And that lesson has been learned by many high performers. Another one that comes to mind is Layton Hewitt, who was Australia's tennis champion was 21 when he won the world championship and never recovered. He'd had that thing on his mind since he was a little tacker. He got there. Fantastic. And there was nothing beyond that. So I learned a really good lesson there quite early on at 27. So when I have big goals and I've always got something going, whether it's my business or my sports.
I've got investments and things like that, whatever it is I'm working on, I always make sure I've got a summit and I'm a hundred percent focused on achieving that summit, but I never allow it to be the only summit. So I actually call it endless summit. So sort of bouncing from goal to goal through life. And sometimes you fall short of them. So it definitely Exaltz was falling short. However, it wasn't entirely unexpected. It was, it was almost a ridiculous goal that Pell and I set. And I was extremely proud of what we achieved and with Paul in those couple of years. So the backup plan for me is PWC, I'm going to give myself a go at that. And I'm really stoked about that actually, because I'm loving the end zone and being at that level, you know, it's, it is next level.
I have no real expectations going into PWC, I'm probably going to get an absolute spanking, but in a way I'm really looking for that because I'm looking for that, you know, what's that next huge challenge? Um, that I can reach. That's what I really sink my teeth into. So I'm going to see how that goes through what the vibe is like in the competition. I've heard mixed, um, impressions of what that circuit is like. Um, I found the SRS tremendous in terms of camaraderie and support and things like that. So I will say it's going to have a, you know, pretty big shoes for the, um, PWC to step into in terms of that, but the competition is next level. And I also understand the psychology is different at that level and I've raced at that level in other sports. So, um, you know, I'm not delusional there, but I'm really looking forward to that. And I'm not turning them back on hike and fly, you know, I'm still really fit.
I'm still, you know, December, I got a thousand meters a day up the mountain for a month and I can still do pretty, pretty well physically. So while I've still got that physical ability, particularly at my age, I don't want to lose that. And, you know, now my flying has got to a much better level. I'm really looking forward to the 2025 hike and fly season as well. I think I've got, um, a lot of good results. So, uh, two races in France, three in Austria and Transcapa, Shaba and Brazil are on the menu for this year.
People often ask me, you know, Gavin, how do you do all this cool stuff and maintain any other semblance of life? Now I have to ask it with you. You said, you know, earlier on in the show, you're married, you've got four different businesses. You've got a daughter, your dad, uh, are they just screaming at you to come home more or how are you? How are you pulling all this off? Cause you're spending a lot of time away.
Yeah, I think that's a really important question. And I started, we started this podcast with me talking about, um, grit and finding what it is that gives you meaning and purpose and drive. And so I think my girls, you know, they're 17 and 19, my daughters and my wife have a very clear understanding and I've made it clear to them and they know me well enough by now of what makes me tick. So they, they, they saw me sitting on the couch during COVID locked in my house, locked out of my country. They're like, okay, go get
out of here.
Yeah. So I got a one way flight to France and I did what, you know, is normally a two to four year program to do the mini transit. I knocked that off in 11 months and raced the mini transit. So that was, you know, it was a bit of a record set over there at the time too. And um, and they know that I need that. And when I returned from these things, whether it's big goals. I've worked or sport, um, I come back with a renewed energy about me that makes me a better husband, you know, makes me a better dad and things like that. So it's a, it's a bit of a trade off. They, they, I think they would prefer to see me 50 % of the time, you know, absolutely thriving and pumping and pushing the family in great directions than to have me around for a hundred percent of the time and somewhat miserable and bored and things like that. So they understand it's an investment in the collective time.
My daughter's coming home tomorrow. She's off her own volition. She's just really homesickness as a dad and I've taken the weekend off to buy cups on, but I'm not going because we're going to have a great weekend together. So we, we have a, a good agreement. And I think it's a really important point that I talked to a lot of my younger mates about is I think the biggest decision we make in life, it's not the career you choose, uh, it's the partner that you choose. And I have an amazing wife who, for example, loves, I can fly more than I do because she's my supporter. She takes her dog, she drives the van and just, she can't get enough of her driving around Europe and supporting me. And I think having a partner like that is, it's not just supporting, it's actually motivating, you know, she's totally invested in my outcomes.
Um, she follows me on the tracker wherever I am, um, you know, she's my greatest supporter as I am to her. She's into competitive sport herself. She's putting herself through another education program, et cetera, at the moment. So it's, you know, we're pretty, we're very mutual. We're very mutually supportive in each other's endeavors and goals. And I make that point, you know, really strongly to my younger friends who are in the dating game and things like that is, you know, find someone that makes you the best version of yourself and settle for no one less.
I was, uh, back in my sailing days, so this must have been, I was living in Fremantle in Australia, just south of Perth with this guy and my girlfriend and it was, uh, we were, we were really broke. It was, it was a hard section of that whole, you know, going around the world for the, I guess that was the first time. And every time when I go into the bathroom and take a leak, there was a sign up above the toilet that said, and this is a little dated, it would say it differently, a little bit different now that, you know, it was top 10 things for a, I can't, a joyful life, happy life, you know, you know, they, they have these lists and the number one one was marry the right person. This one decision alone will determine 90 % of your happiness or misery.
I think that's brilliant. That's pretty accurate. It matters a lot. That's a big one.
Yeah. And I look, I, I had a pretty rough road in the twenties to get to where I've got to. So I had some difficult times on the relationship side, but, uh, you know, I came from a family that I didn't have the best model of what, you know, relationships look like. So there was some pretty good trial and errors and things going on in my twenties. And I'm very thankful what, uh, I have with my wife and what was created and that's, that's very much. A part of what allows me to dedicate myself to my work, my sports, whatever endeavors I've got is a partner who's fully invested in those outcomes. So rather than, you know, I've got other friends who are like, oh, they're, you know, they're gritting their teeth. And this is a pissed off with them because they're away from home and yada, yada, yada. And I feel terribly sorry for them. I've got a, this is who's saying, Hey, hon, you know, get over that site, you know, you got over that psychological fear, SIV is going well, just get your head into it.
You can do it, you know? And she's really in tune with how I'm going. Very invested. And it's, it really is the best decision you can, you can make is find someone who makes you better than you can be alone.
We're up against our time limit a little bit, but there, and you, you are a listener of the show. You've heard me ask this question many times with others, but with you, I'm really interested in asking this question because you have done so much with your life, but if you could rewind the clock to your 50 hour self, and I think this should not be paragliding, this should be. Declare you. So back in your teens somewhere, if you got to just magically take yourself from right now at your age in Austria and go back and talk to that little wing nut. What would you tell them knowing
what you know now,
Um, milk every bit out of it that you can. I think, you know, I was racing through life pretty fast as we discussed Gavin and I had an amazing career in uniform and out of the uniform and a lot of it flashed by where, um, you know, you
can be...
i was taking it for granted you know i was getting up in the morning as a 21 year old flying three hops a day in an amazing piece of machinery and uh longing longing for the day to end so i could jump off the cliff in my hang glider and so i probably would have told myself to just sort of slow down a bit and smell the roses and enjoy it along the way probably the best advice i've given my younger self yeah
time doesn't uh time doesn't slow down as we age does it not
accelerates rapidly does rapidly surge
your treat man i appreciate it we've needed to do this for a long time i think the stars align in a really good way we hit you at a good time this was a lovely chat and can't wait to see what you do with the next few years and i'm excited to go racing with you in spain man i'll be seeing you soon your first world cup and my i've done a whole lot of these so maybe i can share some knowledge it will be good to catch
up mate and i've got to thank you for what you've done you know when i started into paragliding i made an effort of listening to every podcast every single podcast that had anything to do with paragliding and one of those i believed had a lot to do with saving my life um i got myself into a very early on in my paragliding career got myself into a very strong valley wind and a very narrow pass where i was doing 85 kilometers an hour down wind on a b-wing had about 50 kilometers an hour downwind on a b-wing had about 50 kilometers an hour downwind on a b-wing 50 meters off the ground turned into wing my speed break my speed bar broke so i'm going backwards at around 50 kilometers an hour and i looked backwards because i could see i was going to impact a long way down range and there was a set of high tension power lines and i just listened to one of your podcasts with i think it was with cedar if
you're if it's high tension power lines it was with cedar he was pretty um i
just yeah i just listened to that one and i told you i had a
so i made a really good decision there which was still kilometers upwind was to run downwind and i only just cleared the pole and then spin it essentially over the top because there was another set you know another 10 kilometers down valley and um that really had a lot to do with getting me out of a really difficult situation which was likely to end up in those lines so you know what you what you do for everyone and including myself you know i i have really benefited from cloud so thanks for what you do i appreciate
it man that's a good story you you had told me that one that was uh i could remember that one i
think i sent you a i think i sent you a subscription after that one because i felt like that was i felt like that was uh well and truly worth a subscription that piece of information
well i appreciate it and uh thanks for your support of course but uh more importantly thanks for for sharing this uh these great stories and your incredible dedication i think many people including myself are going to find it really inspiring but thanks man good talking to you you
too buddy see you night cheers if
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