Cross Country – August 2023
English | 94 pages | pdf | 50.32 MB
Welcome at Cross Country Magazine August 2023 Issue
The X-Alps was gone, vanished from Kitzbühel after a week of build-up and finally a genuinely amazing start in the centre of this beautiful Austrian ski town. My colleague Marcus and I had hiked-and-flown the Hahnenkamm, played retrieve driver for Gavin McClurg, and talked to dozens of pilots and their supporters. The energy from the new teams was infectious and swept away any reserves in its path.
Now the village was quiet as we walked through its streets to find a beer. At the bar I saw a man wearing an X-Alps cap nursing a drink in a copper cup, watching race launches on his phone. Was he involved in the race, I asked?
Not really, but… he said. He was the head of the local paragliding club in Kitzbühel, and he’d been around all weekend, helping out here and there. Over the next hour Didi Koidl shared some of his stories from his three decades flying in Kitzbühel.
Usually there were only 30 pilots at the weekend, although 300 had launched this Sunday, he said. The busiest weekend ever, I asked? Maybe not.
Some 25 years ago he’d been involved in helping film the Red Bull Speed Run. About 50,000 spectators had watched the world’s best hang glider pilots race down the Hahnenkamm, the mountain the X-Alps pilots had raced up.
Pilots had to literally fly through gates on the mountain, super low and fast, like flying a giant slalom course. A certain Ulrich Grill, now organiser of the Red Bull X-Alps, was in charge of filming for TV. “It’s extremely hard to describe what went on in Kitzbühel,” wrote hang gliding world champion Manfred Ruhmer after winning it. “But it was just amazing!” (Read that here: bit.ly/redbullspeedrun)
It was a reminder I guess that no matter our achievements as a sport and as pilots, we do it because we stand on the shoulders of giants. Many others have come before us, and carved a path.
Cross Country Magazine August 2023 Issue is full of interviews with some of our champions this season – they are the giants of our time, and we salute them.
Enjoy the magazine!
Ed Ewing, editor
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