Cloudbase Mayhem Podcast

This year’s Red Bull X-Alps, if you could put it in a word- scary. We didn’t have a single “standard” day of flying with light wind, nice cumulus, and good base, unless you count the Prologue! We had incredible heat the first three days, low base, wind and stable conditions, then the thunderstorms started, strong Fohn from the South and North, window-breaking hail, severe lightning and really, really strong wind for the remainder of the race. Every athlete I spoke with at the awards at the end had a look of just going to battle. For the first time in my four races, the bad weather got everyone, regardless of where you were on the course, and it didn’t let up. There were times when all 12 pairs of my shoes were soaked. After a good showing in the Prologue and going into the race pretty beat up from a crash at the end of May, and carrying the remainder of a flu into the race, which later turned into some kind of pneumonia (we’re not sure, but it was ugly!) and having a terrifically bad start, Team USA 1 started clawing back. We narrowly escaped elimination twice, but stayed positive, had a blast, made some critical moves and battled to the very end. We stuck with the process, relied on the training, stayed optimistic, and trusted in our team. In the end Team USA 1 did 590 km on the ground, over 50,000 meters of vertical ascent (Everest 6 times!) and…didn’t die. As always, it was an insane adventure and in this podcast I take on the wonderful questions that came in from all of you who cheered us on. I hope you enjoy!
 
Show Notes (questions that came in):

* Alain Plattner: This is a long one, i apologize:
My question is about the race format. It looked as if a number of pilots got injured or had close calls because of bad flying conditions, but it seems like having “no fly days” makes no sense when the athletes are spread all over the alps. So i wanted to ask your opinion on changing the race format:
For example, the route could be split into five 2-day segments. The start of each segment is the end of the previous segment. At the end of each of these 2-day periods, all athletes are taken to the start of the next segment. Athletes who don’t make it to the finish of a segment would get “negative miles”, athletes who go beyond the finish would get “positive miles”. At the beginning of the last (fifth) segment, athletes would start based on their “mile balance” (positive miles from the segments minus negative miles).
The advantage would be: The athletes stay close together, so “no fly days” would make more sense. Also, it could be more exciting for the athletes and the fans to have everyone fly closer together.
* Philipp Bethge:  What happened on the first two days?
* Alejandro: So many thing to comment on! Could you talk about airspace and all the mess that went on with pilots infringing it (or not)? and also about the issues with some pilots and turn points on the prologue. How did you keep motivation on the first days with the bad weather, the wrong decisions and finding yourself so much back? Could you also comment on gear? Has the super light been taken too far with pilots having issues with flying with a wet glider? Should there be a minimum parachute reserve size? Having a parachute for 90 kg max for a pilot’s AWU of 87 thrown at 3000 m is probably no a good idea. Also in all the photos from you it seems your backpack is too big to be comfortable(too far away from your back), was this an issue? Planning on doing the Vercofly this year?
* Nadine Wyss: I would be interested in how you perceive the risks of these events.
It seems as if more and more pilots are inspired to challenge the « no flying » conditions and think that anything is possible. But it seems that most of the athletes take a very calculated risk – where and what is...