Gettin Square with Jonny Durand

Red Bull Australia
Sports
Aerial Sports
Gettin' Square with Jonny Durand

Mark Watson/Red Bull Photofiles

Gettin' Square with Jonny Durand

11/07/2011

He's gottin square, he's gottin high, now freakish Aussie hang-glider Jonny Durand is getting down to business at the 2011 Hang Gliding World Championships.
Currently ranked No.1 in the world, the Gold Coast daredevil who knows no fear other than the wrath of swooping magpies, touched down in Sigillo, Italy this week where he will vie for his first world title after finishing runner-up in France in 2009.
2011 is Jonny's sweet 16th at the mercy of the winds, Gods and a non-powered kite-like contraption. And if all goes to plan, he'll be throwing a 16th birthday party like no other.
Only God and Jonny know how the 30-year-old controls his bladder over the 100-200km circuits he'll be covering. But from what Jonny tells us, he'll pull out no stops to make sure he leaves Italy and his consequent 10-day European holiday a satisfied man.
"Yeah, I competed in it last time and I came second there, so only one place better to go," says Jonny, who used to moonlight as a minder on movie sets for films such as Gettin' Square and The Crocodile Hunter.
As sweet as she is, Bindi Irwin gives us mere mortals the shits in little doses, so it's little wonder Jonny returned to the sky soon after and turned full-time in 2004.
Now, he's primed for the biggest challenge of his career as he goes in search of the elusive world title, flying 15,000 feet above the scenic Italian terrain in a paper aeroplane on steroids.
"It's hard to prepare because the courses change everyday depending on weather conditions," he says.
"I wont know until the day - we’ll probably find out about an hour before we take off what the course is. And from there, there's a different course every day. Depending on the weather it could be a 100 to 200km course and we'll do about 50km an hour on average. We'll all have an aerial start and it's fastest to the finish after that."
Jonny has won eight from nine races on the world tour so far this year after winning nine of 13 in 2010, so he's got more chance of taking out this year's title than a super model does The Biggest Loser.
"I was world No.1 most of all last year and the year before but the world rankings are updated every month, there's no final as such," he says.
"But I'm felling confident. I'm pumped for a big event."
And what exactly has the preparation involved? Running? Intense gym work? Protein shakes and calves blood?
"Nah, this is it," he says with grin. My job is going on airplanes and flying around the world. I think I've been home three weeks this year. I don't actually have a lot of physical training, just flight training.
"And if I'm not up in the air - I'm up there about 400 hours a year - I'm sleeping or partying. Not much really (laughs).
"It's not like most sports here like football where you have to train every day for it. Its all up in the air really."
It's not all fun and games but. Birds attack him - in the air and at bars. And there's the very serious reality of plummeting to his death should his equipment fail in brutal weather conditions.
"It can be pretty scary sometimes, yeah," he says without a hint of fear.
"Hitting a bad pocket of air and being thrown around and flipped certaintly can happen and it has happened to other ppl. But not me. Fingers crossed.
"We sign our lives away generally. But for most jobs these day you do. Right?"