no, not talking about the soccer exploit…
Has any of you heard of the X-Alps Challenge?
This is a pretty crazy race using paragliders.
Start is in Salzburg and normally the finish line is in Monaco. Contestants can only fly or walk. The whole thing takes about 8-10 days.
This year, 7 times champion Christian Maurer (Chrigel the Eagle) has not only won again but took a tremendous lead on day 8 and managed to win the race with more than a day in the lead before the arrival of the 2nd contestant, who is still in the air right now. Looks like it could be a 2nd Swiss guy, followed by two french men.
I find it kind of strange that this thing does not get more publicity. It is very interesting to watch (there are race summaries from the previous years) and by golly are those guys in form. I have to say, if I was in my teens again, I might aspire in that direction. Way too late now, but they really are flying pretty much free as a bird… just climb a hill and off you go…
Fascinating to say the least.
I would imagine you have to be in very good shape to do it – paragliders probably start to feel pretty heavy after you’ve hiked uphill a couple of km with one.
Mooney_Driver wrote:
I find it kind of strange that this thing does not get more publicity
It is a fascinating adventure and obviously a great challenge for the participant. But for many reasons it is no spectator sport. E.g.:
- The rules are badly balanced. If one does a Duothlon, it is important, that both disciplines have at least some impact on your chances of winning. As one can see very well this year, in X-Alps a single decision when flying is orders of magnitude more important than however good you climb on hills.
- Multi day events are rarely good spectator sports. It does only work if on each day you only need to watch 1-2hrs to get the gist of the competition (and that is 1-2hrs life and not artificially cut material). Actually: Tour de France is the only multi day sports competition that really works as spectator sport (well, the UK friends might now throw in some cricket ;-)).
- It’s not really exciting as a competition: Participants are typically many hours apart from each other – not a real fight.
Looks like that Red Bull also fully understands this – and doesn’t treat this as a sports competition but rather as a big adventure to do a movie on. Just look at the daily summaries and look at how much of the footage shown there is really explaining the competition (i.e. showing what each athlete did or did not to win or loose, explain the tactics, etc.) vs. showing nice pictures of the alps, how the participants get up in the morning, etc.
Therefore in my opinion: Great athletes, great movies but not a competition to watch.
Just imagine the summary of yesterdays football match in 4 minutes, showing three minutes of how the players had breakfast, boarding the team bus, arriving at the stadium and then in the remaining minute showing two of the goals…
I think the interesting thing with Red Bull and their competitions is that they do market them but differently. And I also get the idea that many of them are there for the sake of fun and because they can do it.
As for the balance, well, in order to take part you really have to be good at both. Looking at the climbs these guys do, with their shutes and equipment loaded, 800 meters altitude difference is just a before breakfast training goal for some of those… I think you really need both, a stellar endurance and outstanding flying skills.
What I found funny is not so much that the media don’t pick up on the event as such, but seeing what nationalist frevor even some obscure sports generate if a particular country gets a world champion or similar, it is quite astonishing that at least the Swiss press has not picked up the fact that not only have they got a World Champion but also a by now 7 times winner of this remarkable event. As you say, maybe simply not juicy enough.
I’ve had a lot of fun following it this year. You don’t need to be glued to a TV, but looking at the live positions a couple of times a day. Seeing where they are in the evening, how much progress they’ve made in a lunch break.
It looked like you need some luck. The first people could just fly past Mont Blanc, although it took them a few hours to get to the right altitude, etc. The people who came later had to walk for roughly 2 days because the weather was too bad for flying. Then in the leading group some people stayed in Italy due to weather, one guy went north due to the same weather, and that decision let him win. Then I figured out it was his 7th winning, I realized that maybe it wasn’t some luck, but also some skills.
chrisn wrote:
It looked like you need some luck
Obviously – but that is kind of natural to outdoor sports, isn’t it?
In any gliding competition you also need a bit of luck. The difference is, that in gliding competitions the rules are structured in a way that even if you are unlucky one day you still have a fair chance of winning.
Comparing what happened here to gliding would actually be quite interesting. I would love to hear an interview with the second guy on what his tactics was. It seems like that he was exactly on par with the winner until 2 days before the finish. In gliding the dominant strategy would be (in case you are on par with a six time winner late in the competition) to be glued on his tail and wait until he does an obvious mistake or try to get an edge in final approach.
I’d love to know why the second did not do that?!? Did he believe he’d made a better decision? Did he have a slightly worse chute? Did he loose some decisive seconds on a climb by foot?
chrisn wrote:
Then I figured out it was his 7th winning, I realized that maybe it wasn’t some luck, but also some skills.
That guy is in a league of his own. I guess it helps that he did that exploit literally in his home turf (he is from Adelboden) but it was the only decision which worked. Some mates here were musing about what they would do and one actually predicted the tactics, but not the outcome, which was quite epic.
Malibuflyer wrote:
Did he have a slightly worse chute?
I think in this league they all have top material. Very light and top notch aerodynamics.
My take is that in this “Föhn” Situation you really need to know the weather system inside out. Not all of them did. But somehow I thing not even Chrigl expected to end up near Merano that evening.
I followed this the last couple of years.
They do 50.000 vertical meters (climb up) on foot. If you go hiking in the alps, even 1000m up is something. So imagine 50 kilometers, only counting the „up“, in a week… absolutely extreme!
And it is a Swiss double victory now… yet the Swiss Press remains ignorant.
