It’s mid-race in the 2023 Red Bull X-Alps, a 1,200km-plus paragliding adventure around the Alps, and the man they call “Chrigel the Eagle” is about to take off. I’m standing on a Swiss Alpine pass. The wind has been gusting in excess of 30mph and is far stronger than is normally safe to fly. But normal rules don’t apply in this race – or to this athlete. He waits patiently for a lull, then whips up his wing. The force of the energy sweeps him momentarily from his feet and he pulls at his control lines like a mad puppeteer, simultaneously leaping across the rocky-strewn ground to keep it overhead. For a fraction of a second he stands motionless, as if he’s tamed nature itself. Then, with just a few gentle steps, he spreads his wings and launches into the air.
There are only a few athletes whose dominance completely transcends the limits of their peers: Tiger Woods as a young man, Michael Schumacher, Roger Federer, Usain Bolt… Christian Maurer, better known as Chrigel, is another. He hails from the Swiss village of Adelboden, whose mountains inspired Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, and is a three-time paragliding world champion. What sets him apart, however, is his reign of dominance at the Red Bull X-Alps – he’s won every edition since 2009. For this race, Maurer trains up to 25 hours a week and flies 280 hours a year. Unlike other pilots he focuses almost entirely on this one fixture.
