corinna schwiegershausen <<corinna>> writes:

Christian Maurer won the Red Bull X-Alps in an amazing 8 days, he flew 73 % of the 818 km from Dachstein in Austria to Monaco. Last years winner Alex Hofer, also Swiss like Christian, is about to finish right now, two days after Chrigel. You can have a look at their life tracks here:

http://www.redbullxalps.com/index.aspx

I'm amazed about the skill of Christian, because the weather was very mixed over the last week, not just great XC days. He also seems to be very fit and fast finding the best take offs for the next flight. Hugh Miller from XC magazine covered the comp on the X- Alps blog with interviews and videos.

I love the idea of crossing the whole European Alps with turnpoints at the highest, most scenic peaks of Europe by flying, hiking and camping, but I could never face so much walking as some of the guys had to do. Big congrats to all the brave competitors, but also to the organizers for a great life coverage!

Christian's helper only just started flying. And Christian "Chrigel" Maurer started flying hang gliders just two years ago (after nine years of flying paragliders) and he won the Swiss Hang Gliding Open last year in straight away,  There were two large comp tasks and the whole Swiss national team was there, including Christian Voiblet, Martin Harri and other big names.

 Christian "Chrigel" Maurer is young, successful and very modest. I've met him several times in big comps like world cup and world championship - he was always relaxed, fun, never boasting off his incredible skills. When I was in Fiesch, I packed my glider up because the wind was too strong (in my opinion), then Chrigel came over and visited, top landed and played with his paraglider up there at Kühboden. Beautiful to watch! But not quite logical that his dance looked so easy while it was definitely too rough for me to take off in my hang glider.

Unfortunately, Chrigel doesn't have enough time to do both hang gliding and paragliding. He just had a baby, so he concentrates on big events only. He has been flying for eleven years now and teaches young Swiss paraglider pilots how to improve in comps. It was quite funny to hear a then 25 year old Chrigel to talk about the "young guys" that he is teaching, barely younger than him. This is his homepage: http://www.chrigelmaurer.ch/.