Woman ace takes on men in extreme-sport air racing

For Melanie Astles, the only woman pilot to compete in the Red Bull Air Race, flying low and fast is a childhood dream come true and offers her the chance to literally go up against some of the best aerobatic pilots in the world.

The race aboard single prop, high-performance aerobatic planes, takes place this year over three continents and eight venues.

It started in March, in Abu Dhabi, with 22 competitors and winds up on October 15-16 in Las Vegas, in the United States for the final round after a stop in Indianapolis on October 1 and 2.

Flying at speeds of 370 km/h (230 miles/hour), pilots launch into a slalom-like obstacle course, winding their way between and around 25-metre-high (82-feet) light-cloth, air-filled pylons, just above water or ground level.

The planes race against the clock, taking off one after another and flashing through the obstacles with just 3.5 metres to spare at each wingtip.

"The psychological aspect is really important because you need to be completely focussed for one minute and 30 seconds, 110%, and a mistake of just one millisecond will cost you the race," says Astles, who was born in Rugby, England, to an English father and French mother, but who grew up mainly in France.

For the first time since the Red Bull Air Race was first run 13 years' ago, a woman is competing in this adrenaline-high, male-dominated extreme-sport where you need to be physically-fit to cope with the G force accelerations that slam you against the cockpit seat as if on a supercharged fairground ride.

But you also must be fully in tune with your plane, hardly conscious of touching the control stick.

Asked if she ever feels frightened, Astles  says she's much too focused on performance.

"I'm very calm in the plane and you can't be frightened, you don't have time for that," she says.

Being the only woman in the field does however add to the pressure, she says, but it's also an opportunity to be a role model for other women pilots.

She once dreamed of becoming an Air Force pilot, like many of her male competitors in the Red Bull international air race.

But she left school aged 18, uninterested in academics.

"I worked at a petrol station, got some money together and, bit by bit, paid for my flying lessons," she says.

Today, aged 34, she is both a flying instructor and a five-time French aerobatics champion.

"I've always loved to race, be it car racing, motorbike racing, I've always loved that. It's part of me," she says, adding her hero is the late Formula One Grand Prix legend Ayrton Senna.

The race is all that and more.

"It's airplane meets motor-racing, meets downhill skiing," explains Paul Bonhomme, Astles' coach, and himself a former Red Bull Air Race champion.

"You might sacrifice a bit of time into one turn, but that will save you more time on the exit, same as car-racing, very similar to downhill slalom skiing," he adds.

Competing at the Lausitzring race-track, in eastern Germany, the planes come roaring out of the sky, trailing smoke for higher visibility, looping their way around the pylons before candle-climbing away into the sky.

The ground teams -- serving pilots in the beginners' 'Challenger class' or top 'Champion class' -- keenly observe each other as they compete to gain micro-seconds by reducing wing drag, or work up computer programmes to analyse the best trajectories.

The number of pilots competing in the race is now down to 21 after Austrian pilot Hannes Arch died in a helicopter crash, in early September, while flying privately at home.

Source: AFP