Dave Matthews

Chabre 2009 interview with: Dave Matthews, UK team member

Dave Matthews, 45, lives in Brighton, England, five minutes from one of south England’s best hang gliding sites, Devil’s Dyke. He’s been flying since he was 25years old and competing since his early 30s.

An architect by profession with a private practice in London he lives with his partner Sue and her grandson, George. Before he took to the skies himself he used to watch hang gliders fly on the cliffs near his home, and decided he wanted to join them in the air, not simply watch from the ground.     

“I started hang gliding in 1988 on the South Downs in England,” he says. “My first flights were low hops down a shallow slope and a lot of carrying back to the top. It was much harder work than I thought it would be, but great fun.”

“Flying is a fantastic feeling that is difficult to describe,” he says. “You feel completely detached from the world and very privileged.” He adds: “I fly mostly for the fun of it, and the exhilaration.”

As a member of the British team, he won Gold at the 2007 World Championships in Texas.  He rates that as one of his greatest achievements in the sport. Other highlights include winning the US nationals in 2007 and being British Open series champion, also in 2007.
    
But it was in Spain 15 years ago that he had what he says was his most memorable flight. “We were flying at Piedrahita in central Spain and reached 15,000ft in convergence,” he says. “We landed just as it was getting dark.”

Personal bests include a 284km flight at the World Championships in Texas, and a six-hour out-and-return 100km flight from home turf on the South Downs.

Admitting to “getting nervous rather than scared” in a big competition, Dave’s flying has also brought him love. “I met my partner Sue who also used to fly hang gliders,” he says. “She’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me while flying.”

On the flip side, the worst thing that has happened was when he broke a vertebrae in his neck. “It was shortly after I started flying,” he says. “I was trying to land downwind up a slope and misjudged the strength of the wind.”
    
On safety, he says that hang gliding is “not nearly” as dangerous as it was 30 years ago. Back then, he says, “a lot of the gliders were home made and the pilots self taught.”

Today however, “The gliders are rigorously tested and pilots learn to fly in registered schools.” He adds: “the sport still needs to be treated with respect though.”
    
His favourite place to fly is the site closest to home. “Devil’s Dyke is five-minutes drive from my house.”

But he rates Laragne, home to the 2008 pre-World Championships and the 2009 World Championships, as excellent. “I've flown Laragne many times and consider it to be the best site in Europe.

“It's a great place for closed-circuit flying. I hope to have some really good flying in the pre-worlds and maybe come back with a team trophy again.”

On whether Team UK will come home with a gold medal again in 2009 he is silent, simply asking, “Who knows?” Perhaps anything can happen.

Dave doesn’t do any formal fitness training for flying, preferring to simply get out and “fly as much as I can”.  On the mental-training side of things he is again straightforward, preferring to deal with the issue of psychological pressure in competitions simply: “I don't let it get to me too much,” he says.

A long term competitor his sporting aim is simply to “do well at international level”. However, his overriding ambition is simply “to keep enjoying it”.

The 2008 Hang gliding preworlds and the 2009 FAI World Championships at Laragne-Chabre, should provide plenty of opportunity for that.

Dave Matthews interviewed by Ed Ewing, May 2008.