SAFA Skysailor Magazine

27 SPRING 2025 | September-October-November SKY SAILOR start nodding off in the harness. For a day or two after the race, I felt almost normal, then I hit a wall and was really tired for nearly a week. How did the X-Alps compare to the X-Pyr? The X-Alps pushes you in ways the X-Pyr doesn’t. In the X-Pyr, you get eleven hours off each night (more than I normally sleep!) so you actually recover. In the X-Alps, the sleep shortage builds up day after day until it changes how you fly. Normally, if it gets really rough you’re hyper-alert, hanging on, thinking, ‘I’ve got to manage this’, but when I was tired, I was like, ‘Yeah, it’s rough, whatever.’ You stop caring as you usually would – good in that you’re not wound up and burning mental energy, but bad because you probably should be caring. Your reactions slow, your decisions aren't the best, and you’re not as sharp as you need to be. Was there a moment when you knew a decision had cost you big? Day four stands out. I’d been flying just behind the lead gaggle for the first couple of days, using them as a reference – seeing where they made mistakes and making sure I didn’t do the same. That day, I actually caught the lead gaggle – huge for me! I came in ~50m lower, they climbed out, and I got stuck. That 40-minute delay meant I missed a weather window, and they were gone. That’s when I realised that in this race, missing one climb can blow out into hours lost, even an entire day. The gaps open fast – miss a weather window and you'll never catch up. This year’s X-Alps was notorious for tough weather and we even saw some top pilots stand down. How did you approach risk and decision-making in those conditions? Photos: Shane Tighe and support team