This is an interview I did with Scott Barrett in France - more on YouTube at youtube.com/Chabre2009
Cross Country
September 2008
When Scott Barrett stormed the first day of the pre-worlds at Laragne, France, this summer, it was a case of jaws hitting the floor. He went from 20 minutes behind the pack to overtaking it on top and eking out a 15:1 final glide diagonally across a valley to goal, arriving 20 minutes ahead of the pack which had been left trapped just out of reach of goal. It sounded preposterous. Here was this guy, in Europe for the first time, racing against some of the best pilots in Europe, including the world champion Attila Bertok and the French and British teams, and he’d won.
At the take off on Aspres, a south-facing hill with a large, perfect launch, all the talk had been about Attila. “It’s gotta be Attila!” said event director David Owen when asked who he had his money on to win the competition. Meet director Heather Mull was more circumspect, but had a similar answer: “The British pilots have flown here a lot, the French team is here and the current world champion is here.” Nobody mentioned the Australian.
But he was there all the time, flying an Airborne C4 that he’d designed, built and tested himself, and confident in his own abilities.
“It’s my first time in Europe and I’m having a blast,” he said later that evening. He was talking, in a fairly conservative way, about his flight that day. “I made goal. I made goal in the fastest time and I was first across the line. I had a really good day charging through the mountains.”
For the first day of a big comp he seemed to have been remarkably laid back. “There were a lot of guys racing before they needed to,” he said of the start. “I hung out with guys, spiralled down in the middle of the valley, took some photos of launch and the gaggles that were forming.” A smile spreads across his face as he remembers it. “Just taking it easy, relaxing.”
Most pilots took the first gate, but Scott held off. “I watched hordes head off on task. I started on the second clock, 20 minutes behind, and had the advantage of seeing where they were climbing well. I managed to link up three thermals to take me through to the second turnpoint.”
What was the second turnpoint? “Don’t know,” he says disarmingly, “I look at numbers on the GPS.” He adds: “People talk about all sorts of names and ridges but it’s just mountains and sun and wind to me.”
Scott is an engineer by training, and his brain seems to work in a fairly logical way. He admits as much, saying, “I have a great mind for it [competition flying].” He also, he says, has a “never ending self belief.” The results, “just follow”.
Those results – first at the Airborne Gulgong classic in 2007, third at the NSW state title in Manilla this year, and the first place at the pre-worlds – mean he is now ranked sixth in Australia and 21st in the world. He’s been flying since 1996 and competing since 2001.
Scott learned to fly in Bright, Australia, and now lives and flies in Newcastle, New South Wales, soaring the coast near his home. “My dogs love to fly with me at the beach,” he says. “We do a lot of dune soaring on training gliders which is a very good fun, and race topless gliders up and down the coast doing cross country runs.”
Each year, says Scott, the pilots fly with a new sea eagle chick, which breed nearby. “They learn to fly with us on the cliffs just up the road from my house,” he says. “We also have mountains close by, where we can do some cross country through the hills.”
Scott is 33, and works for Airborne as an aeronautical engineer on product development projects. “Design, test, break and fly things,” he says about his job description. It means he flies 400 hours a year and is around good pilots all the time. “Rick Duncan, Tony Barton and Attila Bertok all live close by,” he says.
One of the immediately striking things about Scott is his assuredness. It is not arrogance, cockiness or mumbling self-deprecation – common traits in many achievers. Instead, he is straightforward and thinks seriously about a question, before giving a clear, considered reply. This, it becomes clear, is what well-placed self-belief looks like.
“When my purpose is to learn, I just can’t lose,” he says. “I have no fear of failure and I always retain great confidence in what I do.” He is bold: “I feel that I’m only getting started in getting results in racing.”
The pre-worlds, he says, was about getting a result. He went there to win. Before heading to the competition he had three days flying triangles around Annecy, and then four days practice at Laragne. “I had a list of goals to achieve,” he says.
“I interviewed a number of very experienced pilots in the area, I took careful notes so I only had to ask once. I practiced likely final glides and learned where the thermals were.”
This paid off on his first day. When he went directly to the last thermal, which he’d discovered on a practice day, putting him on top of the gaggle, all the other pilots were hanging back trying to get height for the final glide, he knew the valley was often buoyant in the afternoon. It wasn’t a ballsy gamble, it was an informed final move which he took on his own.
“I used the gaggles but I can do it with or without them,” he says of the flying in Laragne. “I wasn’t afraid to do something different when it was a clear advantage.” On the whole, he says, “I was a lot tamer than I usually am”.
From the start of Scott’s competition career his motivation has been to learn to fly cross country. “I was amazed at the flights that the comp pilots were doing and the higher skill level,” he says. “Competition is the way to learn how it’s done.”
And although Scott has “neglected” the “big AAA competition circuit” this year (“we didn’t have nationals team selection”) he’s been flying in other ways. “This year I really enjoyed organising ‘Scott’s Mystery Mountain Tour,’” he says, “a wandering bivouac XC tour, with friends, flying through the Victorian Alps – we’d all like to do that again.”
Scott also enjoys working with other pilots, helping them learn. “I’m very aware that I’m living other people’s dreams and I’m quite happy for them to be a part of what I do,” he says.
“I quite enjoy working on pilot development and with new enthusiastic pilots. It helps to maintain perspective on the wonders of the flying that we do – it’s rewarding for me to see others enjoying their flying.”
But then so is winning competitions. After task 1 at the pre-worlds Scott came 14th in task two, and then won the third valid task by a mere three seconds and five points. Once might be lucky, twice is deliberate. It set pilots jumping at the competition and online.
"Why do I start off with Scott Barrett winning the day? Because it is news!” enthused Davis Straub on his Oz Report that morning. “It is news because it is against type, against expectations. It shakes up our view of the world. It isn't supposed to be happening, but it is. This is a guy who has never flown here and he's flying on a glider from the smaller and less celebrated of the two Australian hang gliding companies."
The next day it rained, the day after Scott flew the 99km task in two hours 56 minutes – arriving in goal a full 35 minutes after Attila Bertok, who had recovered from a cold earlier in the week to storm back on the final day. A start on the first gate meant Scott was 21st on the day, but he’d done enough to clinch the competition. No longer unknown, Scott Barrett will be watched closely when he heads back to Laragne for the World Championships next year.
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