Stanislav Mayer and his supporter Jiri Dlask during the Red Bull X-Alps in Garzeno, Italy on 10 July 2017. Photo: Honza Zak / Red Bull Content Pool
Perhaps we were all softened by 2015.
Back then, with good weather and a route through the mountains, 19 of the 32 athletes who started in Salzburg completed the 1,038km course to arrive in Peille overlooking the Mediterranean sea.
Chrigel Maurer’s personal record for Salzburg to Monaco is 6 days, 23 hours, and 40 minutes, but that was in 2013, when the weather was good and the course followed the high mountains. That year nine other teams made it to goal.
In 2007, five people made it. In the first edition in 2003, just three. In the three other races – 2005, 2009, and 2011 – only two reached the finish line.
The sun always shines on Google Earth. In front of our live tracking screens it is easy to miss the punishing brutality of the race.
We see an athlete hike up to launch in the morning, and we don’t internalise that in the space of our morning commute he’s climbed 1,500m vertical in sweltering humidity, the salt of a week of sweat abrading both the straps of the broken and hastily-repaired rucksack and the skin of his shoulders alike.
We see a pilot lingering on the way up, not knowing that his knees and ankles stab with pain with every step.
That “resting” icon on launch? “Why don’t you fly?” we cry in frustration. On our digital maps, we cannot see the unbroken sea of cloud below. The howling wind does not threaten to tear our glider apart on the only rocky gap between the bushes where’s there’s half a space to lay out.
Finally the athlete’s status changes to “flying”. For us watchers we care only for the promise of kilometres along the course line. We do not feel the fear of bombing out nor will we pay its punishing physical price. A gruelling battle against strong and turbulent headwinds appears only as a temporary numerical statistic. We do not hear the distant rumble of thunder and the first drops of rain from the approaching storm do not fall on our screen.
We might end our working days at 6pm, but for the Red Bull X-Alps athletes there is still four hours thirty minutes of punishing pavement to pound the knees and aggravate the ankles. Twenty miles of the same step – left, right, left, right – repeated ad infinitum until every part of our body is worn down.
All this for a meal quickly consumed, a few scattered hours to overcome the pain and find sleep, and the knowledge that tomorrow will all too quickly bring more of the same.
This race makes inhuman demands on those who dare challenge it. As the 2017 race enters its closing act, as the icons move pixel by pixel across our screens, let us not forget the human story in every step of the adventure.
Follow the race at www.redbullxalps.com/live-tracking.html.
Tom Payne has competed in the Red Bull X-Alps as an athlete and a supporter. He has also been a technical advisor to several teams in previous editions and a race reporter
