Christian "Chrigel" Maurer (born 1982), also known as "Chrigel the Eagle" or the "Eagle of Adelboden", is a Swiss paragliding competition pilot and endurance athlete who has won all eight

Red Bull X-Alps The Red Bull X-Alps is a paragliding race in which athletes must hike or fly 1,200 km across the Alps. It first launched in 2003 and has since taken place every other year. Around 30 athletes take part and must navigate their way via a predet ...

"hike-and-fly" paragliding championships since 2009, including the 2023 edition. He has also won the paragliding World Cup, World, European and Swiss championships multiple times, and the Pyreneean X-Pyr hike-and-fly championships four times (all editions since 2014, including 2022), as well as the Swiss Hang Gliding championships in 2007. In 2009, Maurer set an

aerobatic Aerobatics is the practice of flying maneuvers involving aircraft attitudes that are not used in conventional passenger-carrying flights. The term is a portmanteau of "aerial" and "acrobatics". Aerobatics are performed in aeroplanes and glid ...

world record for the most "Infinity Tumbles", performing 210 consecutive tumbles in a row in a paraglider. Since 2012 he has worked as advisor and test pilot for European paraglider manufacturers Ozone and

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. He is also active in teaching and coaching the sport of competition paragliding, with emphasis on young paraglider pilots, and provides motivational speaking to groups and organizations. Maurer grew up in Adelboden, in the Bernese Highlands, where he attended elementary and secondary schools. At the age of four, in 1986, he flew with his father in a tandem paraglider for the first time. By the age of nine he was allowed to perform "flying exercises" near the ground and "small takeoffs". When he reached the legal flying age of 16, he passed his tests and received his flying certificate. While participating in flying competitions around the world, he worked as a

bricklayer A bricklayer, which is related to but different from a mason, is a craftsman and tradesman who lays bricks to construct brickwork. The terms also refer to personnel who use blocks to construct blockwork walls and other forms of masonry. ...

for two years, but by 2004 he decided to pursue a full-time career as a professional paragliding competitor and test pilot. In 2006 Maurer met his future wife, fellow Swiss paragliding champion and World Cup winner (then Appenzeller), on the Paragliding World Cup (PWC) circuit, where they both competed and won gold medals in their respective categories. The pair was dubbed "dream couple" by the local media, and married in 2007. They have two sons. His younger brother Michael is also an accomplished paragliding competition pilot.

References

External links

Chrigel Maurer's Home Page

Christian Maurer "The Eagle of Adelboden"

Christian Maurer 2019 interview
by

Greg Hamerton Greg Hamerton (born in Cape Town in 1973) is a South African fantasy novelist and extreme sports writer. Biography Greg Hamerton was educated early at a Waldorf school (based on the Rudolf Steiner system). He matriculated from South African ...

2013 Ted Talk
{{DEFAULTSORT:Maurer, Chrigel Living people 1982 births Paraglider pilots Swiss athletes