How Do The Best Paragliding Pilots Train And Think?

Maxime Pinot had his first tandem flight at 7 or 8, spent the years from 9 to 12 ground handling a small wing, and flew solo at 13. From 15 he went to a government-supported high school in the Pyrenees that trains young pilots in cross-country alongside their studies, which he calls one of the best places to learn everything you need. Honorin Hamard's father, who taught himself to fly in 1987, drove him around France's sites like a Tour de France. He flew more than 200 hours in each of his first two years, doing over a hundred takeoffs and landings a day on the windy coast near home, and started competing in the flatlands before he learned the mountain breezes. He told his father early on that his dream was to be world champion.

Antoine Girard came from competition rock climbing and mountaineering. He attempted Cho Oyu in 2004, climbed solo on K2 in 2006 and turned back alone at around 8,000 metres, and tried Broad Peak twice, once taking off from Camp 3 at 7,200 metres. An expedition took a month for one summit; with a paraglider, he says, he can see ten or twenty in a day. He won the first paragliding competition he entered, in 2011, finished third in his second, the Red Bull X-Alps, and has flown three more since, mostly for his sponsors, because his real goal is expeditions. Robbie Whittall started on hang gliders and describes the freedom of his first solo flight as the start of an obsession, dedication being the polite word for it. He moved to paragliding, then with Mike Cavanagh and Dave Pilkington started Ozone, where his part was design and testing.

Honorin Hamard's progression was careful at first: about 250 to 300 hours on his first wing, 200 to 300 on a sportier B, an SIV course on each, and around 100 hours practising on his first competition wing along the coast before racing it. Then, between his second and third years of competing, he moved to a far more demanding wing to match his rivals, and threw his reserve after a frontal on it, which he calls maybe his big mistake in paragliding. His rule now: move up when you know the wing so well that nothing surprises you, even its collapses, and after more than 200 hours on it. A better glider does not mean better flights, he says; B and C wings are more than enough for big flights, and he starts his own students on an easy EN B they can keep for two to four years.

Maxime Pinot says the young pilots he coaches are often upset when told to keep their wing, and then progress enormously when they do step up, because they are ready. You have reached the end of a wing, in his view, when you understand its whole speed range, feel confident in any conditions you fly, and can predict how it will behave; handling a full stall over a lake is not the test. Frequent collapses are a piloting problem, so after any significant one he takes five minutes to work out why. Antoine Girard flies a top-level two-liner in the Alps, but on expeditions takes an easier intermediate two-liner, because on a new or remote site it is better to step down one level.

Honorin Hamard learns each task so well that he barely needs his instrument: a vario on his helmet tells him by sound whether he is climbing, which leaves his eyes free for the other pilots and the birds. He does not attack early, because leading points come later, but works hard to be among the highest after the first climb, where five or ten metres make a difference. If someone out-climbs him in the same thermal, he changes technique, less outside brake or a touch of B riser, and copies what works. He drinks a little every five minutes, can lose five litres on a flight in Brazil, and sets up his own glider before every competition so that he never blames his equipment. A coach helps him calm down when he is too fired up, and with a psychologist he realised he had been racing for his father watching the live tracking rather than for himself.

Maxime Pinot's habits are similar: 30 to 50 grams of carbohydrate an hour in his drink, a sip or two every time he leaves a thermal, and no alcohol after flying. For the young French pilots he coaches there are simple rules that save thinking time: if someone is climbing within your glide reach and you do not go, you have broken the rule; and when a flight turns difficult, the first job is to find another pilot to rely on. In a big gaggle, he says, the best climbers use their eyes, watching the whole circle and moving quickly to whoever is going up. Robbie Whittall adds the other side of it: following a fast gaggle is not easy, but the fun is in being the pilot the gaggle follows, and that means someone has to be brave enough to go a different way.