Patrick Kramer: Going All In, World Titles, and the Art of Being a Student Again

Patrick Kramer won the wingsuit acro world championship, drove away from the competition and thought: now what? Twenty years in the sport from an engineering office in Switzerland to full-time skydive instructor, wingsuit tunnel coach and world champion and the win itself felt like just another day of doing what he loves. That, he says, is the point. In this episode of Leading Edge, Patrick talks about the moment his hobby stopped being enough, what he underestimated about turning skydiving into a job, and why "there's no non-competitor in a competitive environment." We get into his radical reset, leaving it all to train Shaolin in China, eight months of being sore every day, coming back to teach at the new wingsuit tunnel in Slovenia, his idea for a three-way acro discipline that doesn't exist yet, and how keeping the next discipline in the back of your mind is what keeps twenty years in the sport from burning you out. The takeaway: romanticise things less, stay a student, and never look back saying you should have.