Anatomy of a Dream with Damien Lacaze: A Lifestyle Full of Grit, Grace and Vertical Freedom

Damien Lacaze: So we were very high above them. At this moment, we were maybe 2,000 meters above the summit, and maybe 5,000 or 6,000 meters above ground, above the valley. It was like moon. It was magic. Damn, bro. Damn. You're

Aninder: giving me four more big times. I want to be a part of this. Like, South Africa is magic. Pakistan is magic. Flying is magic. Yeah. Flying is true. Always magic. What is up, everyone? Welcome back to your weekly dose of awesomeness here at Paragliding Atlas Podcast. I'm your host, Anindya Singh. And joining us today is a name we all know very well from the hike and fly races. And I'm talking about none other than the man himself, Damien Lacaze. Damien, this is such a big honor. Welcome to the show. Thank you. Thank you very much. Damien, I want to start with a little bit of your history, because you come from a sports background which was not paragliding, and you were fairly active even before you

Aninder: got in the sport. So how did the art of flight come into your life? I come from mountaineering. My father was a mountain guide, so I started quite

Damien Lacaze: early to climb and to go in mountains. And I discovered paragliding quite late at 22 with mountain friends for jogging. We just made a course to say, well, we are bored to walk down from the mountain. We would like to try to fly down. And I fell in love immediately with this sport. It was amazing. I immediately bought a wing on eBay. eBay. Yeah, on eBay. That's a long time ago. And yeah, after I tried to learn alone. But yeah, like every young pilot, I made some mistakes. I made some, yeah, fear, but no accidents. And after I began to learn more classically with a school. And one year later, I made my first... not big, but big for me, XSE flights. And after two years, I started to enter in a school to become an

instructor.

And I discovered competition in this because of that, because I needed to make competitions to enter in this formation. For me, it was like a, I don't know if the name is correct in English, but revelation. Really big. Yeah, I liked it a lot immediately. I didn't know I had this kind of competition spirit. But I enjoyed to race in paragliding since the first time because it worked, of course. And that's my first competition experience. For maybe two or three years, I continued to mix mountaineering, climbing, and paragliding. And it was difficult to manage all these activities, plus my job, of course. and after some years I decided to slow down mountain to focus to fly more and and I

thought okay if I want to come back in mountain later I can of course but for now I want to learn how to fly far and to fly fast and and that's my main hobby now I'm focused on that You can call this a hobby when you get on the podium of X-Alps. Yeah, but no. I'm talking about, yeah, maybe 10 years ago. I was not thinking about X-Alps yet. I actually wanted to ask you that because mountaineering itself is quite challenging. You get to

Aninder: scale 4,000, 5,000 meter peaks in Alps, I believe. No, in Alps, yeah, maximum it's 4,800. Yeah, okay. But yeah, I went in Pakistan as well to

Damien Lacaze: more to fly than to climb, but we climb 5,500 peaks. Yeah. Yeah, it's challenging, all those skills, but I think it's helped me a lot to progress quickly in paragliding. Just not the skills, but my mind, because when you are... I don't know the word in English, but you are okay with a mountain ambience, a mountain feeling, which is sometimes scary or dangerous. Your mind is already okay with that. It's quite the same in paragliding. If you fly in mountains, sometimes you have to manage some risks, some storms, some winds come from... You cannot understand all the factors you have during a flight. And sometimes you have to accept it can be dangerous or afraid. And if your mental says stop because you are

not used to support that, you can be traumatized or afraid and stop to fly. Fortunately, my mind was stronger. Sometimes I'm afraid. Sometimes I'm scared. asking, OK, now it's too much or too dangerous. But when it's finished, For my mind, it's okay. It's finished. Now I'm focused on the next goal. I can analyze what's happened and do not repeat the same mistake further. But yeah, my mind is strong for that. I can not forget, but I can let this fear out and go on. I think cross-training is the right word. When you train for one sport, it helps you in multiple

Aninder: sports. That mountaineering experience helped you in paragliding. Yeah, on the mind aspect, I'm sure. Yeah. When you began the sport, like 22 is fairly a young age, maybe not for Frenchies because you guys started teenagers, but a lot of other people get later. Did you had any long-term goals or like the vision because eventually reaching exiles and getting on the podium and being a part of the whole tribe is quite special. What was your vision like when you... Yeah, you will be disappointed. I was starting to fly like a hobby no more at the beginning

Damien Lacaze: and for the two first years was hobby no more but I was enjoying a lot but I had no goal at all neither competition and for me X-Alps was, yeah, inaccessible. I'm not this kind of guy who is able to fix big goals and to work on it to reach them. For me, I have a big lack of self-confidence. If I see a nice goal, for me, I start to think it's not possible, it's too difficult. When I started to fly, I didn't watch... the races yet, but I was watching the cross-country races. I was watching the good French teams like Jean-Marc Caron, Julien Wirz, the old guys now. And I was

thinking, wow, there are machines, I will never be able to fly with them. They are too strong. And two or three years later, I was in the French team. It was impossible to fix that goal because for my mind, it's not accessible. I'm walking step by step. At a certain moment, I see, oh, maybe I have the skills to do that. I don't know how to explain that. But man, it's only passion and yeah, how all the fly and skills developed. Yeah, I'm not working on that goal because for me it's not possible. After some years, I discovered some skills and I think, OK, now maybe I

can think to that. And that was the same for X-Alps. When I heard about this race for the first time, I was thinking, what the hell is this race? It's crazy. It's too difficult. The men are crazy. It's like Ultra Trail. For me, it was impossible to run 160K in a row. The first time I heard about Ultra Trail, I was thinking that it's impossible. For maybe two or three years, I was watching this race like a crazy thing, impossible for classic humans. And I started to think about... compete one day, maybe after supporting Benoit in 2017. And I applied in 19, I was not selected, and they took me in 21. But yeah, it took me lots of time to accept in my mind, maybe I have the skills to try to

do that. How many hours were you when you got selected for X-Helps? Like how many hour pilot were you? When I was selected for the first time? Yeah. Usually I fly around 200 to 250 hours by year. But before it was a bit less. I don't know, maybe 1,000, maybe 1,200. I don't know really. I don't count every year. I know approximately how many hours I do each year, but I never... to try to accumulate all these houses. Let's talk

Aninder: about your mindset a little bit because climbing is challenging when you expose yourself to risk. It needs a lot of preparation and a certain way of being at peace with having some expectations but making them sometimes or not making them sometimes. Did you prepare the same way in paragliding or do you see some changes from your mindset in climbing to paragliding because a lot of people use paragliders as safety descent tools. So a lot of climbers are switching to paragliding. So I'm just wondering, what are the similarities here? Interesting. I think

Damien Lacaze: climbers and mountaineers, when they started paragliding, they're from a true paraglider point of view, no mountaineer guy, are crazy because there are no fear. And the guy... who only fly with which who lives in a flat land with no mountains cannot understand what's going on in the mind of a strong mountaineer or strong climber because they are used to manage some risk they are used to count on their skills to be safe and they are used to have a strong mind to to stay focused in the sketchy difficult situation they are both solo sports because at the end of the

Aninder: day you are alone on the mountain even if you have a team and same in paragliding even if you're flying as a team you are the one who has to fly the glider just like you are the one who has to climb the mountain so i think there are a lot of similarities you can be a very strong pilot why not a world champion and you are not forced to have this kind of mind because the competitions are not Yeah, it's on the safety places most of

Damien Lacaze: the time, most of the time. And it's not in high mountain. You didn't take any big risk for your life. You can make some crazy thing in Himalaya with your rings and didn't make any comps. For me, adventure flights and competition are two different disciplines. And you can do anything.

Aninder: both of them of course but you don't need to have a strong mind and the strong balls for the good pilots that's yeah just two way of flying two way of life indeed let's talk about exalts from being not accepted to being accepted to finally standing on the podium this is a gap of i think six years what was your training like in this six years and how did you evolve as a paraglider pilot during 2019 to 2023? Yeah, you will be

Damien Lacaze: disappointed because I started with a really amateur approach. I started hike and fly in 2016, my first, really first race, short race. It was born to fly in Annecy. with absolutely no specific train and no train. I just walked in the mountain to make some, I can fly like usually no more. Never train on the flat. And one month before the race, I thought, oh, maybe I can try this race. It looks nice. And it was still a hobby in my mind. So I find a friend and we go to race on this nice race, but with absolutely no training. My first race, I won it. by chance because i

made a good move on the first day of flight and the quiggle was here so i was quite proud to beat him yeah but it was pure pure lucky and on the day two i just had a need to run 30k to win and it was over and it made maybe one week to recover because my legs were totally broken after 30k because i was not trained not fit at all after that I made another race the same in 2019 and it was quite the same with no train. And I started to train for 21s for the X-Alps after my selection. But before, yeah, I was quite relaxed and I hadn't any goal. any performance goal in this kind of race until 23, I

think. Because in 21, when I applied, it was for the adventure, sporting adventure and human adventure. This race made me dream for years. It was a victory just to be on the start line. I just wanted to smile, take all the good vibes on the road and enjoy this amazing race. But ranking was not a goal at all in the first years. And after I, when I decided to come back in 23, yeah, I take the thing more seriously and I start to train regularly to work on my mental side. I was lucky as well because all what, all the thing I wanted to improve compared to 21 was work at all and I did almost no

mistakes I was a bit lucky at the end as well and yeah it was almost a perfect race wow that's such a nice thing to hear yeah and that's why it made me more than one year to decide to come back in 25 because after this yeah kind of experience Finishing second on this race, it wasn't a goal, it wasn't even a dream. It was too big for me. And I thought, why I would like to come back? I will disappoint him for sure. The ranking can be a motivation because I was 80%, 90% sure I will not do better. I find motivation to come back because thanks to my mental coach, maybe you

will have some difficulty to understand that, but In my mind, it was impossible for me to win because I had the sensation, my skills, my level in flight, in the ground, was way below the others. And in French, we said, complexe de l'imposteur. It means I have the sensation to not be in my world because the others are... Stronger than me. And that's a big problem for me since I'm a child. I always, yeah, I'm quite shy. Shy and with lack of self-confidence. And I'm always thinking, that's not for me because it's too difficult. For me, winning the ESALB was not possible at all. And I cannot even imagine that. So after my podium was unexpected, My mental coach said to me, maybe you can find motivation if

you try to stop, to forbid, to forbid to win, not to go to win, but just allowed you to, if all is perfect again, maybe you are able to win and that's a good way to work. And we did that. We work a lot on my self-confidence, my skills. on the, yeah, I learned to accept I have some skills and some strength and some weakness and we work on that and now I started to accept that I have some strength and some parts like my mind and my, yeah, I know my mind is strong now and I also have some lackness, my physical weakness especially on the ground, on the flat.

But I know if I did well, I'm able to win if all is good. And that's, yeah, for me, that's a really new thing. And I, yeah, I don't know if I like it, but I feel maybe a bit less, less, how is the word? Sorry, weak, no weak, but you know the word in French. We should have had a Google translator.

Aninder: But no, no worries. I understand the context. I started to feel like an athlete and not like an amateur. But it takes me a long way. And you're smashing podiums in one of the world's toughest adventures out there. And you're out here competing with the best of the best. So I think you are definitely an athlete. Don't be so hard. Would you be comfortable talking a little bit about your mental coach? How do you guys tackle a challenge? Like when there's a challenge in front of you that you have to overcome psychologically. What is the mindset or what is the roadmap that you and your mental coach... What do you guys train mentally, basically? Mainly, it's open discussion with her because now she's a

Damien Lacaze: really good friend. We started every mental coach with some tips, some tools to fix your mind, keep concentrated, manage mistakes, how to react after a mistake, how to stay calm. In France, we said coherence cardiaque, to listen to your heart and try to calm it down. breathing breathing exercises and quickly we didn't stop but we talked a lot we yeah we started to talk a lot with no plane just talking about what scared me what worried me and what in what kind of way i feel strong or weak and and we different we she made an excel tableau i don't know excel excel cheat cheat yeah sorry With my fear, for example, my main fear or my main inquietude, worry, yeah? And she gave me some homework to... Yeah, what

you fear, what you worries, what you don't want to see or to leave during a race. And after we will try to find some way to overpass that. It can be only a sentence or word to keep concentrated, to not screaming when you make a mistake, for example, and to keep focused. Some things are stupid, but I'm not able to say no to somebody because I'm too shy. That was a fear for me in the team. They give me a way or a route to follow. And if I'm not okay with that, I'm not able to say no because yes, I know that I've been thinking about it for a long time and I just fly so I cannot think

about it. And so it's difficult for me to say, no, I don't want to do that because I work for nothing. Yeah. And yeah, she just tried to make me understand they are making the race for me. And that's not a problem if I said, no, we are working together to find another way. It's quite simple, but for me, it's difficult. Yeah. And we have lots of lots of things to do to fix this kind of mental barrier. Since 21, I saw a huge difference in my mind on the way, how I accept the mistakes, how I accept, for example, a penalty. And yeah, before I was so sad. So it was so

difficult. And yes, this year I took six hour penalty and I just said, OK, Now we will take this time to rest and to make some massage. And my supporters were looking at me, okay, no problem. But they told me that after, but they were impressed on my reaction because for them, they were sure I will explode and scream. And no, I was tired. I was really exhausted. So I think it helped me. I just took this time to rest and relax. Try to not waste energy by screaming. Things that have already happened. Yeah. And yeah, I think Delphine, she's her name of my mental coach. Yeah, she did a great job in five years. Amazing. That's good to hear. How does the physical side of things look for you when you plan out

Aninder: an adventure? Is there a certain way you train yourself or do you have specifics that you train for? Yeah. Since I started to take this race

Damien Lacaze: more seriously, since 23, I took a trainer, a coach. The first one was Laurie Genovese. Do you know her? Yeah. Yeah, of course, she was in the

Aninder: race as well. Yeah, it's a good friend, and she's a physiotherapist, and she's a coach and a very good pilot. She knows quite well. We met one year

Damien Lacaze: together in 23, and this year I changed for a French guy from my valley, but very famous, from the training mill. And he's the coach from the French team of ski mountaineering. And as well, some athletes like, I don't know if you know him, Benjamin Védrine, really famous alpinist.

Okay. And he didn't know I can fly races at all because he's not flying. But the projects interested him a lot and he has a different approach of

Damien Lacaze: the training than Laurie. And I liked it at all. And moreover, the relation was different because Laurie was a friend and she She helped me just for fun and because she liked me. And with Leo, it was like professional. I was paying him. So the relations were different and I think it was better because I was forced to respect more his exercise. And he, yeah, like a contract. He called me every two days or three days and asked me how is it. And I, yeah, it was more professional and I think it was better for me. I needed that and I also tried to increase my volume of

training around 20%. My main problem is the time because I have a wife, two daughters, a job. And I have to fly and to train. So for me, it's a challenge to find more than 10 or 12 hours each week to train. That's almost nothing. Sorry? That's quite hard. If you compare with Phil or Maxime, they did double. They did 20, maybe 25. For me, it's not possible because I have not enough time. And for my mind, it was difficult too because... That's another point on mental coaching. But sometimes when I discuss that with Delphine, I said, I'm less meritant. I don't know. I told her it's normal if I don't win or I don't perform because I train half than then. And she answered, are you really thinking you are

less, you deserve less than the other because you train less? Yeah. And she told me, look at the others. This is their job. They train and that's all. Krigal has a family, but his main job is to train, nothing else. Look at you, you have a job, you have two daughters, and you train more. So do you really think you deserve less than the others? You are making such an effort to be there and to train, and you deserve it for sure. And for me, it was the opposite, because I cannot train much. I was lower. So always the same thing in height, always seeing the bad things. Can you talk a little

Aninder: bit about the training program that your trainers decide for you? What did that look like? It was moving every month, some strange exercises,

Damien Lacaze: some interval of course, and volume, a maximum of volume with my three times. And try to mix activities to not get injured. Some bikes in winter, some ski mountaineering, some climbing as well. And after maybe... March, we stopped all the other activities and made all the training by foot to adapt my body to the running side and try to not go in different directions. But the main goal, my body is quite complicated to train because I got some small injuries and pain quickly if I push too much. That's not my main goal. Yeah, my strength. Like Maxime can push harder every week and never get injured. And I'm not like that. I'm not fast. If I try to push too much, I have some pain coming in the knees, in the

hip, in the muscles. So my main challenge and the first thing I said to Leo was I'm really fragile and I don't want to get injured. We tried to take care of my body all the year. And we manage knee pain during six months in the winter and the beginning of spring. But at the end, we managed to avoid it and almost be prepared at the start. Did you have any specific nutritional plans that you were working on? No, I didn't find energy and time to think about that. I'm eating quite healthy, but I don't count how many calories I eat. This year, I tried to take care of what... The

Damien Lacaze: quantity of carbonate, of sugar, I had during the Air Force, but the food was not controlled. Damian, I was on your website and I saw that you're

Aninder: into public speaking as well. You go out and do some seminars with companies and one of those topics was risk management. Is there a certain blueprint that you have devised on how to manage risk when you're out there chasing adventures or any challenge where there is an accepted risk that you go and then there are some goals that you have to achieve? So what is your strategy in managing the risk? I'm not sure I

Damien Lacaze: have a real strategy, but of course, you just said it. I cannot do activities like paragliding or mountaineering without risk and acceptability. Yeah. Yeah, it's... Yeah, the risk in paragliding, if you do a big mistake, is to die and it's the same in mountain. And you have to accept the rules. Of course, we always try to avoid that, to learn some skills to not be in danger and to keep a safe margin. But this part of the game, if you cannot accept that, you cannot really progress or push on some limits. I'm lucky about that because I said that. And when I'm in a tricky situation, in mountain or in flight, I have the capacity to focus on what I need to do now, all the other bad things in my head. stop or go away

for this moment. I'm able to not to think to my daughters, to my house or to my credit, I don't know, whatever. At the moment when it's tricky or risky or windy, I'm able to stay focused on what I need to do now to exit from this situation. And after, there is, yeah, maybe after there is some place for fear or for, I don't know, for... some debriefing and say okay it was this it was too much i have to avoid this situation for the next times and and i don't like to to take risk for nothing but risk is part of my life as well i some people who never do that or who are not mountaineer are

thinking the climbers or some paragliders are crazy guys and don't like the life. And for me, you take risks because you have the feeling your skills and your experience are enough to keep you alive. And this feeling is really amazing. Take this risk because you really like life. I feel really good when I have the feeling I'm in safety because of my skills and my decisions. maybe in a dangerous area, a dangerous mountain or flight. And yeah, for me, that's the definitions of, in France, we said vol libre, free flight. We have the capacity of making good or bad decision and making, yeah, dangerous thing or not, or safe flight or tricky flight. And that's... In this kind of modern society,

that's a luxury to be able to put yourself in a situation where you are responsible of your safety. And it's difficult in this society to accept that because now the risk, taking risk is almost forbidden. But in mountain, you do what you want and you are responsible of your life and your safety. And I like this feeling. Taking irrational risk happens sometimes when we are not prepared for that risk, but it surprises us.

Aninder: How do you debrief after that? What is your way to get back your confidence and make sure you don't repeat it? Irrational risk can

Damien Lacaze: happen. the worst for that is races because because you saw you see the other athlete flying for example yeah and and you don't want to lose the first and you are thinking oh they are flying so i can do it and you can forgot you your skills and your limit and and did and make some stupid things because you have not a skills or experience to manage this risk it can be wind or storm or i don't know and but in other way each time i push further my limit of what I was thinking, what is possible to do in paragliding. Each time I discovered, okay, this wind is possible. It's

possible to fly with this kind of wind. It was in competition because it's impossible to train at home or with no goal in windy conditions because it's really afraid. And if we have no goal or no motivation, you're a normal human. said to himself, it's stupid, I go landing. Even Kriegel said, it's not possible to train to that condition if you are not in competition because the mind says stop very quickly. So you need this challenge, you need this motivation to learn, but in the other hand, it's dangerous because You don't know where is the limit at the beginning when you discover that. And the limit is sometimes. And that's the main problem of the I Can Fly comps. Because of course, on a

small race of two days, for example, the organization can manage the weather and go where the wind is not strong or fix some limits. But in a race like X, it's not possible. And the limit is fixed by the athletes. And all the athletes are... has not the same limits and the same skills. I never thought I was over past my safety margin. Lots of time I discovered it was possible to fly in wind quite strong and two days before I was thinking it was not. So I discovered new way of flying thanks to Krieger, thanks to other pilots who showed me it was possible. And in my head, I

was, yeah, I made some debrief. Okay, we have to, fun is ugly, but it's flyable sometimes. But it's hard to fix a limit. It's not mathematic. It's always different and it's only feelings. That's the problem because you have to try and to say, okay, it's manageable or not. And in most of the case, when you are in flight and it's too strong, you can still manage to land quite safely before it's too late. But it's just experience and feeling, and it's complicated to explain. And I don't advise to anything to test that without many experiences and knowing what they want to do. The real risk in paragliding is to die, really. We are always thinking to that all the time and try to keep some... Good

margin. Indeed. I think I was speaking with your coach, Julian, and he said that only get into the sport if you're willing to, yeah, die for it.

Aninder: To put it simply, because it's quite unforgiving. We all have to choose our decisions carefully. When it comes to choosing decisions, team is critical. Even though it's a solo sport, you had to pick a team in X-Alps. And right now in this World Cup, you guys are here with the French team. So how do team dynamics influence your flying style? And what is the way to find your tribe or your team? How do you find people that are trustworthy? It's always difficult because you need lots of skills, different skills, really different. And it's impossible to find all

Damien Lacaze: the skills in one person. The teams are growing and growing each year. Now, this year, we were seven. We were five, six, seven, no, more. We were nine, six in the van, three and three in each van plus me. And Julien, the coach, was with me at home with the radio and the live tracking for the coaching and the strategy. And Delphine, my mental coach, was here by phone each time I needed. So it was quite a big team. The first time we were only three. It's growing a lot. But it's quite a challenge to find the right person because you have to find the right skills. With this big

team, it's a human experience as well and you have Yeah, you have to manage these potentially human problems. And all the persons have to take care of each other and to make a good emulsion. And one bad person, one bad people is enough to fuck all the team. It's because with the days, quite exhausting, the lack of sleep, and it became quite tricky. And yeah, it's a challenge. And for me, until May... I was not sure to find the right person. One was missing and the most important for me, called the Sherpa, the man who is walking with me in the mountains, taking my non-mandatory stuff and flying down after. It's really hard to find this guy to be very fit, to fly quite well because I don't want to think

about him behind me to think about his safety so i have to be sure he's a good pilot to take the right decision and to land safely because some flights are quite tricky even for him and in general these kind of guys are on the starting line unfortunately in france we have Lots of young pilots dreaming for X-Alps and who wants to make a first experience and to discover this race from inside. After Born to Fly, on the finish line, the third guy was Luc, a young French guy, 24 years old. And I just asked him,

to come like random discussion and it was so exciting about that and it happened like that it was a true revelation because he was so nice so strong and so good person so it was the perfect guy to to complete the team at the last moment they all helped me a lot to take decision as well to to make some plan some strategy and after I was able to decide which one suit the most for me. I'm curious, how did Julian assist you on the phone

Aninder: because he is usually known to take care of cross country comps like racing, parallel world cups and stuff like that. But I can fly is also how does Julian if you're not letting out any secrets? His first war was strategy in flight, not by foot. Making flight plans, sorry, watching

Damien Lacaze: the life tracking and give me some advice and some information about what are doing the others. And then finally he made much more than that because he's, I don't know if you saw him here, but he's a really coach, not a mental coach, but he manage mental of athletes and he knows what's in how head during flights. And during his help, it was amazing. It was like he's in my head. He was helped me to calm down, helped me to keep pushing, helped me to stay calm, especially on the end of the flight to, yeah, to turn in small thermals, to finish well each day until the really

end of thermals. And it was really helpful to have somebody 18 hours by day behind his screen with the live tracking and they said to me, okay, maybe you can go a bit on the right because the other took the thermal here. Okay, you have time, don't worry. It's 8.30, do you have time to cross this pass? And all the time it was like that and it was really helpful. Yeah, he's a really good guy. Did you speak in the air as well,

Aninder: like basically? Yeah, directly with a special application on the phone called Zillow. And it's like radio, but with the phone. You have to tap

Damien Lacaze: and play. Zillow, right? Z-I-L-L-O. I know, I've heard about that. Damien, what is the... best part about Excalibur and what is the worst

Aninder: part about it? This year? I'm just talking about the lifestyle. Hike and fly is a very exciting lifestyle for a lot of people and just with any risk versus reward it has its own ups and downs. From your perspective who has seen the climbing only side of the sport plus the flying side of the sport, what is the best and what is the worst that you look in hike and fly races? I think the best for me is the It's the feeling you have when you

Damien Lacaze: finished the day perfectly. When you don't waste any thermals and you land just before the deadline, you are satisfied about your day. You are looking back what you did on this day. And each morning when you start, it's impossible to know where you finished the day. But if you start to think about... what's going on it's almost impossible because you start to think okay i have 200 meters uphill to walk then maybe 150k flight then i have to sign a panel then maybe walk 200 meters more and the days are really huge with no hands it's crazy unfinished days and when you are At the end of the day, you are thinking about that and you're just thinking, okay, I made all these things. It's crazy. It's

unbelievable. It was not possible to think about all these challenges in the morning. And I like this feeling. To take the... piece one piece after one and just think about the first piece and after the second the hike then the flight and maybe a tricky flight and after maybe a long run on the road but just thinking about the first one and not the whole cake because it's too big to digest in one time and i like this feeling and the worst of course That's the tricky days. Storm, wind, on a course, race, quite long race. You are sure, statistically, it will happen. Maybe only one day, but it's enough to feel fear or be in danger. That's the worst part of this game that you have to think about and you have to be

prepared. So you have to know your limits. You have to know what you can do, what you don't want to do, and stay focused. Yeah, quite rigid with that. Try to not be influenced by the others. And yeah, we saw some footage from Ixalps in Merano in the fun, some crazy takeoff. When we took off from this place, it was maybe one or two hours earlier. It was much less strong, but the takeoff I saw, I don't know, remember who is it, maybe a Spanish or Italian guy. Yeah. It was hell. And I don't want to leave that anymore, neither. So for me, that's the limit. Do thoughts

Aninder: like quitting come to your mind when things get challenging in races like this? That this is not worth it, maybe I should just give it up? Kriegel? Yeah. Yeah, I don't remember. On these races... i don't remember i said no or stop one times we took some difficult choices but it

Damien Lacaze: was more to avoid this kind of situation for example on the way back to locarno from france we decided to cross the main ridge to pass in the valley in swiss switzerland because it was focusing big storms in Aost and in the Italian side. So we managed to cross and finish in Locarno on the night. We decided to not go on the storms. So it was a difficult option because if it's not working, I landed in Switzerland and it was quite longer and really hard to exit by foot. But yeah, I'm quite happy about this choice and the strategy because I was safe and not in a tricky

situation like Tim, for example. Tim was in the storms and he was, yeah, I think he now is traumatized because he was climbing in cumulonimbus like hell with, yeah, with no snow, but I don't know the name in English. Hell. Yeah. And he made maybe 1,000 of stools to go down. And after he was crying and his race was finished, he stopped. Yeah, and that's why we choose to avoid that and to pass on the north of the Massif. So he's a pretty good acro pilot. Yeah, pretty good pilot. Like he knows how to handle his glider. And if he can get scared? Yeah, because you can be the best pirate of the world. Storm is a storm and it's more

powerful than you. Much more. Are you comfortable talking about it? What happened? Basically, he just got sucked up and then he had to stall his way out? Not really, because I don't know all the story. I didn't talk with him. The reason I'm asking is because the moment cloud suck

Aninder: happens, stalls are not really helpful. Nothing really helps in cloud suck. What is the way to get out of a cloud? Maybe it's to fly straight on

Damien Lacaze: the... Yeah, on the good way. But I don't know what's happened exactly. And I know he was on the south side of Mont Rose, on the big massif, more than 4,000 meters. Maybe there is mountains everywhere. And he was afraid to hurt the ground. And I don't know what's happened exactly, so I can't talk. But I know he has the best feeling in the pilot. He's incredible in the air. If he's afraid like that, Maybe it was not very comfortable to fly. What makes people like him who are experienced enough to do that kind of stupidity? Is it just like... competition because you want to be better than the other like you're willing to put your life yeah that's why I try to explain sometimes it's tried it's hard

to say stop when we are flying it's you are thinking okay it's still okay I can cross this ridge and we'll see behind and you cross the ridge and behind it's suddenly all dark or sucking and climbing everywhere and it's too late and when we saw you see the other pilots cross this area 30 minutes earlier maybe you can think okay it's still good but a storm grow up quite early and at a certain moment it's not good anymore but there is a limit it's really hard to find and it's harder especially when we are on the ground it's easier to say okay no it's not good i walk but when we are in

flight it's much more difficult to say Okay, now it's too much, I go to land. Especially if the other already passed. And sometimes when we think, okay, now I want to land, it's too late. In the wind, it can be okay. But in the storms, when you want to land, it's already too late. Because when you want too late, that means it's climbing everywhere. And with two-liners, the only descent technique is to pull the G-shoot and go

Aninder: spiral, right? Yeah, I think Tim is really strong for that. And in stall, he can fall really quickly. Do you carry a G-shoot? Because I don't see anybody using a G-shoot. No, no, it's too much weight. Damn, how did I forget that? What is the descent technique for a two-liner then? The simplest descent technique for a two-liner that I know is spiraling. But stalls don't work that well. If you manage to keep the backwind with

Damien Lacaze: really big hurls, you can fall at eight meters per second and without any centrifuge thrust. Okay, so just like backfly. Yeah, backfly with big, yeah. Huge. Yeah, huge backfly. So just do some SIVs before you get into that. All right, interesting. I know we are running to the end of the time

Aninder: right now, but is there any flight that was a learning experience for you that was like, all right, this flight is something that I would like to repeat or I would not like to repeat? How have you experienced that over the period of competing at Excelves? I think not the last one, but the

Damien Lacaze: last day, the day where the first arrived, I was 40km behind because of my penalty. And they flew to the last turnpoint, Lermos, and I started to fly maybe one hour behind them because of the penalty. I took off at 11km. And I was thinking to myself, OK, if I have a chance to catch them, I need to fly fast. I need to be efficient. And the day was perfect. It was a really nice cross-country day with high cloud bases. And I was really happy about this flight because it was... Really nice. I was quite good in my decision on speed and I managed to not to catch them because there were

too much in front. But I was alone and I was flying faster than them and there were four. So I was, yeah, this feeling was good. It was like if I was nothing to lose, because now or never, do or die, after eight days of race, it was like a race in the race. And I liked to play to that. I was not able to catch them, but it was really nice. At the end, when I arrived at Lermos, I had maybe one hour and 30 minutes behind, so maybe 20Ks or 25Ks. And after it was over because I made another mistake and I bombed out. But this flight was a really good memory and I would love to fly in that spirit

during a race because it's tricky to take this kind of sporting risk, not for my body, but because when we fly with the group in competition, you don't want to be isolated in front and low and see the other fly over you. And so you stay isolated. high don't take too much risk and fly most of the time quite slow and what I would like to do for the next not every time but yeah to be able to feel this good vibes and to take some sporting risk to fly fast it's yeah it's like in cross country but in cross country if you bomb out you lose a day and that's doesn't matter in such a race if you bomb

out you lose maybe half a day and it's hard to accept but If you can avoid this part and make confidence in your skills and be sure it will be okay because you are a good pilot, you know how to fly fast and you know the risk really is still acceptable. You can, yeah, you can maybe make the difference. Indeed. One thing that I've been very curious is, be it Excels or be it Adventures, triple C gliders are not being used by a lot of

Aninder: people. Like most pilots prefer two-liner Ds. Do you have any idea why triple Cs are not being used? Yeah. Except the weight part. Because weight maybe can be made. What is weight, sorry? The weight, the heavy. Ah, okay. So if we take away the weight, like why don't people use...

Damien Lacaze: First, because it's forbidden. The limit for X-Alps is E and D. They are not allowed. If it was allowed, the main difference between these swings are the... accessibility, the comfort, and the take- off and landing. On the CCC, you cannot really slow down the wing before the stall. This light wing accepts to fly quite slow and still fly. And it's really appropriate for top landings and moreover for the take-offs with Zeolite, for example, you can you can take off with backwind it's inflating really easy and that's the limit of CCC and the big aspect ratio sorry it's yeah more the aspect ratio is big more it's difficult to inflate backwind and yeah backwind and with by running And it's much

more demanding in tricky situations for top lands and for, yeah, even for wind and for descending as well. Funny how Daphne, a French pilot,

Aninder: took a D wing and still made it count in this World Cup. Yeah. She shows that the difference between a D and a triple C is very negligible. Yeah,

Damien Lacaze: but a Zenon 2 flight likes a CCC almost. It's a high, very high D. Is it? Yeah, it's a D wing, but at the beginning of the Zeno 2, Honorin bring it and won all the comp with it. Oh, really? Yeah, it flies really well. Okay. So, that's interesting. Because to me, D and triple Cs were class

Aninder: apart. Zeolite, it's a true D, but Zeno 2 is much... If you race with Zeolite and Zeno is any day winning? Xeno is much more performant than

Damien Lacaze: the Zeolite. Much more fast as well. So when you go out on adventures, 5,000, 6,000 meters, would you prefer having Xeno if the weight was not a

Aninder: problem? Yeah. Last year in 24, we went to Pakistan with my friend Fabi to climb and to fly. And we bring the two wings. The Zeolite for the combos

Damien Lacaze: and the Xeno 2 just for the trip. For the big flights, because I was afraid to take the Enzo. And the Xeno... Well, for me, it was the perfect wing for that. We made a 300K with the Zeno and it's a safe wing, but still very performant. So yeah, it was perfect. That's nice because I always

Aninder: wonder that every 8,000-meter summit or anybody who's trying to launch from there is always using... Ah, for this kind of journey, I prefer my Zeolite, of course. No, it has to be an easier launch for that. But what is the highest you've learned from? Launch, I think it's 600 and 500.

6,000. 6,000. Yeah. Okay, 6,500. How's the launch conditions over there? Because the air is thin. Yeah, it is thin, but we had something

Damien Lacaze: like 15 or... No, I did two launches from this altitude. The first was no wind on the morning, but with perfect snow, hard snow, so it was easy to run and the perfect slope as well. It was difficult to run and we had to run quite fast, but with the slope, it was... helping. The second one was on the plateau, very flat. And we were in a storm for three days with Antoine. It was in 2018. It was completely impossible to take off. We were waiting for a good window with face wind. And we took this window, 10 to 15 k's of good wind to take off. Without that, it wasn't possible to

take off. Do you have any more exciting adventures coming up? Maybe next winter we plan to come back to South Africa. to try to make big cross-country free distances with my friend and maybe one other friend, three French. It's not booked yet, but it's a plan. And maybe Pakistan next June. Damn, man. Sounds exciting. You must be carrying oxygen on all of these? No. It's complicated to bring a bottle in the air. And after one week of acclimatization, we feel good at 600 or 700 meters in flight. Of course, not if we need to walk, but flying at 6.5 is okay after one week. If you already slept, sleep at 4,000 and walk a bit higher during the day, after one week, you can fly at 6,000 meters with no

problems. But South Africa, that's quite high. That's like above ground level is like 4,000 or something. Yeah, the flat, it's a desert, big plateau at between 1 and 1.2 thousand meters. And sometimes the cloud bases can reach 6,000 meters. It's crazy. At the cloud base, you are at 5,000 meters above ground. It's crazy. it's amazing do you see the ground yeah you see the ground but yeah it's right the view it's unbelievable and that's at this kind of altitude you can have really strong wind and on the ground it's still manageable so that's why we we go there because you can expect some average flight really fast something like more than 50 or 60 k's per hour sometimes at 6000 you can fly with 60

kph of wind yeah And you can, for example, the last glide, if you manage to fly it perfectly, you can leave the cloud base at 6,000 and glide for 100 km until the ground. Yeah, because you have 5,000 meters to fly, pushing by 50 or 60 kph of wind, and your glide ratio is something like... One is 200. 25 or so, yeah. Yeah. It's crazy. Man, that sounds exciting. Yeah, yeah, it's crazy. But really, the perfect days, we didn't meet the perfect days yet. The Clement did 550Ks two years ago. But maybe the local pilot said there is a potential for 700. I'm not sure, but 600 for

sure. Will it make sense to take a CCC at that location? Yeah, of course we will fly with the Enzo. That's what I was wondering. That's the first year you went there. We bring Zeno 2 because we didn't know the area, the thermal, the conditions, and it's really strong. And now we are thinking it's possible with Enzo. But yeah, we have to keep in mind it's forbidden to land between... 1 to 4 o'clock because it's hell on the ground with dust devils everywhere with really strong thermal gusts. The dust devils are crazy up to 200 or 300 meters above ground. It's really huge with thermals up to 12 or 13 meters. It sounds like a different planet you're talking about. It's like Mars or something.

Definitely not holidays. It's an adventure. But yeah, it's quite dangerous if you land in the middle of the afternoon because it's really strong. Okay, so there is no scope for low save, basically. Like, you have to get high. Neville, when he broke, for the first time, the 700 kilometers mark, he was here and he made one or two low saves with almost 80 kilometers per hour of wind. It was crazy. He said, if I didn't manage to climb, I will die for sure. And when we... His track is on an XOC contest, if you are curious. but he's crazy this day he took off at 11 and

landed before six i think so the flight was short and he made 500 k's in with a crazy average with an old and bad wing yeah yeah like it was a d- wing but for almost 20 years ago what i'm wondering is How do you make a low save at 80 km an hour? What does a thermal look like at that point? I don't know.

Aninder: It's hard to visualize. How do you climb in such heavy wind? I think this is different from there. The thermals are drifting with the wind and

Damien Lacaze: climbing quite straight, but just drifting. This is not a slant, but it is just moving. It's moving with the wind and there is lots of triggers with some slopes, with some bumps. You can see the triggers because you can see the Dust Devil. Of course, you can go over that. quite higher or over. Of course, there is a thermal bow. But if you are low, yeah, I never experienced to zigzag between those devils very low, but I don't want to try. What is the thermal strength like? Up to 10, maybe 12 meter by seconds, sometimes on the good days. Damn. Yeah, it's strong. Yeah. Is

Aninder: this how flying on Mars would look like? Maybe. I don't know. So next time we are tired of distance records on Earth, we go to a different planet and start chasing it. No, but Damien, I think we have come to the end of the show with that. And usually I ask my guests about a flight that has stuck with them, but I think you already mentioned that. Is there a flight that you can always remember from your flight log so far that has emotionally been with you that you'd like to share? I think one of my best flight was in Pakistan. My first journey in Pakistan, when we flew at almost 8,000

Damien Lacaze: meters close to the China border with Antoine. And we were in Vaudley Rock with total autonomy for 15 days. And this day was amazing. We hadn't any forecast weather. And we took off this morning to reach Karimabad because we planned to rest some days in this small town. The day was amazing and in the morning we reached more than 6,000 meters and we flew really really fast and the wind was quite strong, north wind. And we enter together in a thermal monster. And after some, yeah, it was 13 meters by second. I remember I had the GoPro and I was watching the Vario. It was crazy. 13. And when he stopped, how Vario shows 7,700. So yeah, we left.

Why did you leave? Because we were close to cloud base, maybe 100 meters above, but it was dropping down and it was the end. That day we landed at 6,000 to finish our acclimatization and we just checked our GPS altitude and both of you, we flew at 7,960 meters. The barometer was wrong and the...

and how four GPS shows the same altitude. If we have known that before, maybe we would have turned a bit just to reach 8,000. But yeah, that was an amazing experience. How does life feel when you're so damn high? Yeah, it was like on the moon because the summit was not very high, maybe 6,000 or 6,500. So we were very high above them. It was not when Antoine broke his altitude record on the Broad Peak, which is an 8,000 summit. So it was just above the summit. In this moment, we were maybe 2,000 meters above the summit, and then maybe 5,000 or 6,000 meters above ground, above the

valley. It was like moon. It was magic. Damn, bro. You're giving me full world big time. I want to be a part of this. Like, South Africa is magic.

Aninder: Pakistan is magic. Flying is magic. Flying is always magic. Even soaring on the coast is magic. Except for yesterday's task. Yeah, no. Yesterday, Tom's gallery was bumping out. Oh, man. Damien, as I always say when I hear experiences like this, that there's no one such episode which can do justice to your thing. We'd love to call you back later when you have new stories and new adventures. Thank you. But now we have run out of time, and all I can say is, man, thank you so much. It's been a real honor. Thank you, too, to invite me. Yeah. Keep rocking, and we'll stay tuned to your Instagram, YouTube, wherever you keep posting, man. Thank you very much. Hey everyone, for those of you who have listened

this far, I just wanted to drop in a note of thanks because you guys are the ones who are actually making the difference. It means the world to me whenever I see audience retention rates remain high all the way to the end. And I'd like to add on by saying that if you have liked the content that you just consumed, do consider liking, subscribing, and dropping a rating wherever possible, because that is one way we can let the algorithms of all of these streaming platforms know that this episode is worthy of being pushed out to more pilots in the community. So collectively, you and I can make this sport a safer and a more fun place to be. Well, on that note, thank you once again for joining me today. And I'm

really looking forward to connecting with you in the next episode as well. Until then, I'm going to say what I always say, and that is stay tuned, stay excited, because this magic is just getting started.