The dark side of practicing speed flying 
- an accident history Signe Lillienskjold Knudsen

 Data publikacji : 23.02.2019

When you start a great, fascinating adventure with small wing, you feel as if the days have become meaningful. By the time ... The statistics are ruthless - the most accidents are among the paragliders. The accidents divide life into "after" and "before". A rehabilitation, long investigation into full physical and mental fitness, learning about the meaning ... 

Discover the story of an amazing pilot, traveler - Signe Lillienskjold Knudsen , who survived hitting a tree at a speed of 80 km / h and today her words teach us and force us to a deep reflection.

Agnieszka Chmielewska : How long have you been staying in the hospital after an accident ?

Signe Lillienskjold Knudsen : I was staying in the hospital in Bern, Switzerland for a little under two weeks after my accident. I was scheduled to fly to Denmark soon after that. I come from Denmark and my parents live there so given the severity of my injuries I was dependent on them (still am!) and had to move back to recover.

A. Ch. : Did you have time to talk to other patients (after an accident too) in the hospital ?

S. L. K. : Actually, no. I’m a little sad about that because I actually bonded quite well with the woman laying opposite of me in my hospital room. She was a nice, older lady who had taken a bad fall and injured her arm. She gave me her Swiss number but since then I have changed my Swiss phone to my Danish one and have lost her cell number in that action.

A. Ch. : You have gone through weeks of hardcore exercises. What does your typical day of rehabilitation look like ? How long does rehabilitation last? In addition to the rehabilitation activities you are attending, do you still go on rehabilitation batches ?
 
S. L. K. : A typical day for me here in Denmark in rehabilitation is quite simple. I wake up pretty late because my physical therapy is always scheduled after 11AM. Before my accident I lived in Lauterbrunnen, Switzerland, and I used to get up early pretty much every day to check what the weather situation was like. I used to have a really nice, early routine and loved to get up in the morning. Now it’s different – haha! After I wake up now, I prepare a good breakfast. I’m a slow eater so sometimes it takes me an hour to finish breakfast. I’m a huge fan of white and green tea so I usually drink a cup in the morning. After that I make ready to go and meet with my physical therapist. I train for 1.5 hour with her 3-4 times per week. After that I drive home, eat a big lunch, take a nap, read books and then I go to bed around midnight. I live with my parents so we do quite a lot of stuff together. Before my accident I had lived abroad for nearly 4 years so actually it’s a privilege to get to spend so much time together.

A. Ch. : In this situation, can we talk about the progress in recovering your fitness ?

S. L. K. : I find this question so tricky. Let’s start by splitting up recovery in a mental and physical category. Physically I’ve worked extremely hard with multiple physical therapists to recover. It’s absolutely insane how much work I have to put in if I want to recover to the level that I was before. In my mind I want to get even stronger than I was before so naturally there are days where it just feels quite endless. I had a 28 cm plate and 8 screws inserted in my left leg. I broke my femur in half, my knee in half, a part of my kneecap had been shattered, my pelvis was broken two places, I suffered from a slight traumatic brain injury and multiple fractures in the skull and face. It’s a lot of stuff to recover but the road is pretty clear when it comes to all the physical stuff – I just have to work hard and exercise every day. I have got to eat right and sleep right and pretty much do everything right in order to recover 100%.

Mentally, it’s a different game. Because of all the physical damage, it’s been hard sometimes to find time and surplus to actually work on the mental aspect of the accident. I was used to an extremely active lifestyle and all of a sudden I was stuck in a wheel chair and my mum had to help me to wipe my ass if I went to the toilet (excuse my language but it’s the truth!). I don’t quite know how I deal with it but in a way it’s just one day at the time. I still think there are more bad days than good days but that’s in a way also just a bad mindset, right? I try to read a lot of books to get some insight but there are not that many on how to recover after having flown into a tree pretty hardcore ?

A. Ch. : What is the biggest problem on the way to recovery now ?

S. L. K. : The biggest “problem” I would say is the uncertainty. There is also a great deal of uncertainty and that’s very hard to deal with. I have many questions like: how will this affect me in the future? What will life look like in one year, two years, three years etc.? Will I always have this much pain? What I’ve learned so far is that I just have to wait and see. Worrying really doesn’t move anything and certainly it doesn’t make my situation better if I constantly worry… haha, but I still do !  

A. Ch. : What are your nearest plans for the future ?

S. L. K. : This question is pretty easy, I think. I just want to get better, you know? I just want to work on physically getting back in shape and keep doing my stuff with my therapists and myself. I try not to plan too much ahead because I’ve learnt that it often comes with a lot of disappointment. Because of all the uncertainty I’ve decided to just take one step at the time.

A. Ch. : What do you usually feel when people see you after an accident ? 
 
S. L. K. : Ugh, hard one! It really depends who it is. When I went back to Lauterbrunnen November last year I had such a strange feeling. I met a lot of support and it was nice seeing some people. But people that I had not heard from since I left the valley, I really had a hard time facing. I’m not going to go deeper into this but let me just say that that was a huge disappointment and it’s something I’ll never forget. Here, at home, a lot of people have asked me (pretty much every day I actually get the same questions): “How can a young girl like you be so handicapped”? In other words, people are curious and they want to know what the heck happened to me. Here in Denmark we don’t have much knowledge about airsports and the general mass really has no idea so instead of saying that I hit a tree with 80 km/h, I tell them it’s a skiing accident. This way they can relate or at least know what I’m talking about.

A. Ch. : Is mental support important to you ?
 
S. L. K. : Of course it’s very, very important to me.. I think it would be to anyone who is in a situation similar to mine. It’s the most important support you can have.

A. Ch. : Who is your psychological support after the accident ?
 
S. L. K. : First thought – my wonderful parents. I don’t have many friends here in Denmark because I’ve lived abroad for some years now and I went to an international school before that so all my friends are spread out across the globe. I have a few really good friends here that feel like family. The people at the clinic of my place of physical therapy are really nice, too! It’s a place I visit multiple times a week so actually it’s very important that the relations I have there are good. And they are. At the clinic I meet people who also have injuries and even if the majority of the patients there are quite older than me, we can still bond over the common experience of being injured.

A. Ch. : Let's go back to the moment of the accident. Do you remember how it came to a fall while speed-flying ?
 
S. L. K. : I remember thinking “shit, this is not good! Shit, I have nowhere to escape to make the situation better” and then I don’t remember anything more. Sometimes at night I wake up with the feeling of falling backwards really fast like I did in my crash where I fell from 9 meters after having plummeted through the top of the branches. I don’t remember the first 3 weeks after my accident. Pretty rough experience.

A. Ch. : What were your emotions like when you found out about effect an accident ?
 
S. L. K. : Being completely honest, I just felt like I didn’t want to live. Everything hurt and everything was uncertain. I had so many fractures everywhere. My leg, my pelvis, my skull and my face. It was just so terrible. I was crying and just being super depressive all the time. My friends told me I behaved like this when they were visiting me in the hospital. I just felt like my life was over.

A. Ch. : Do you regret that you took off on that accident day ? If not then everything would be good today.
 
S. L. K. : There are many things I could regret that day. It wasn’t even my idea to do a speed flight that morning. I only took my speed wing because my friend wanted to try and fly paragliding solo. He was a BASE jumper so that was a terrible idea in the first place but I’m sure you know the feeling that you can’t really decide what other people do and the least thing you can do is help them as best as you can. Well, the guy didn’t even have a helmet so I gave him mine that morning. I figured he needed it more than me since he had never flown a paraglider before. Like ever. Having said all that, it’s like the saying “should’ve, would’ve, could’ve”, right? Something in my behavior craved this experience of having an accident like that and I have to take the lessons out of this experience and move on.

A. Ch. : Have you ever wondered about the cause of the accident ? Did the experts analyze that the accident could have been caused be the equipment malfunction ?
 
S. L. K. : Yes, I do. There are many reasons. I was fiddling about with my Chasecam from my sponsors, Skybean, and I wanted to test it on my speed wing for the first time. I was unsure about the length of the line and I kept messing about with the length so finally I just decided that I would not use it this time because it caused too much stress on the take off. I was always a cautious pilot and I think I’m pretty known for being a bit of a pussy. I often cancel take offs and I’m not always that confident. My head was not clear on take off because I kept worrying about the guy doing his first paragliding flight. After he had taken off I really, really rushed my take off and was a bit in distress. My right eye was on my own flight and my left kept looking at the other dude. Looking back it was just so stupid.

Another aspect of the accident was indeed malfunction. During the last sequence of barrel rolls my trimmers had opened themselves up fully. I already knew that the stitching was not good and was coming out by the trimmers. I should have had it repaired. I did my barrel rolls too low anyways but still – the opening of the trimmers made a significant difference in altitude and I came out way lower than expected over the power lines and couldn’t cross over to the landing. I didn’t even notice the change in speed because I pretty much hit the tree right after my last barrel. It was the police that had told me the trimmers were fully opened when they found me.

A. Ch. : Can you tell when did you start your adventure with paragliding or other air sport ? What were your beginnings in this sport? When and where did your first meeting with aviation take place ?

S. L. K. : My first meeting with paragliding was back in 2015 in Pokhara, Nepal. I had gone to Nepal to hike and discover the country. I bought a one-way ticket when I was 19 years old. In Pokhara I got extremely intriguied by the lifestyle that I saw the professional tandem pilots were having. I was thinking to myself “now that’s what I want life to be like”. To be honest with you, I actually didn’t really fall in love with flying itself or was that fascinated by flying. I was more fascinated with the way these people behaved and their outlook on life. It was really game-changing for me. Actually on my second tandem flight in Pokhara I got really sick to my stomach. After 1.5 hour in the air I felt like I could puke any moment and I had to cover my eyes for the rest of the flight to not get any sicker. It’s funny to think that I eventually got so hooked on flying only acro.

After my trip to Nepal I was only home for about 2 weeks before I went to the South of Spain to do my paragliding license. I started my license on the 1^st of September 2015 and two weeks later I was a “pilot”. After my two weeks in Spain I took the plane straight to Taiwan where I lived on/off for one year. I was flying almost every day and that’s when I really collected hours and got confident. I had so many different experiences there. I remember being pretty fearless and I just wanted more. The flying community there was not really existing. I was with a tandem operation who did 10-12 flights per day and I would go up with the shuttle and fly. I only had one mentor there and he really tried his best but I don’t look back and think that it was a healthy experience for me as a pilot. I got some weird ideas and a very weird way to look at paragliding, I think now looking back and having the experience that I have now. The best lesson, however, that I got was: 1. You can always do better and 2. Always be critical of your own flying and strive to improve safety. That I really got indoctrinated in my brain and for that I’m grateful.

Then after Taiwan I moved to the biggest acro spot in the world – Organya. It’s in the North of Spain close to the border to Andorra. In this place you can fly sometimes 7 hours of the day and even more and it’s known for being an acro spot. I was so young when I lived here (around 20 years old) and I was really all over the place. I wanted to fly but at the same time I remember being always stressed about the other level of the pilots and how they were acting. I mean, I was so young, female and everybody wanted to tell me what to do and what to think and how to fly. It was a time where I got a lot of experience and insight in how the community works. Not always in a positive way. Now I think back and wish that I would start another place where things were less intense and where I wouldn’t always be so intimated by the aggressive conditions that the “magic mountain” produced almost on a daily basis. However, over the course of nearly a year I started to really have many hours. Especially for a pilot only having flown for 1-2 years at the time !

Organya was also the place where I started to think about sponsors. I wanted to fly all the time and I had spent a considerable amount of my money just traveling places to fly. I remember driving up to take off and Brooke Whatnall was telling about how he just received this cool variometer from Skybean. He was (is) a pilot with an insanely good level and I remember thinking “that would be so cool to get, too” but I’m not even close to have the skills that Brooke has. That evening I wrote an e-mail to Skybean. I was stating my situation but also my passion for the sport even if I was a beginner. The next day they wrote to me that they had sent me a variometer.

A. Ch. : What would you consider your greatest sports success as both a pilot and a trainer ?
 
S. L. K. : As a pilot, I would say that my biggest accomplishment so far has been to win the “Female Adventurer 2018” by the New Zealand Film Festival, FoFFF (Freedom of Flight Festival). After my crash in February 2018, I made a short movie about the experience. I was mainly focusing on that nobody really talks about the “dark side of flying” and I felt that a lot of communication about this subject of accidents is missing. I didn’t even submit this film to the festival. The founders of the festival contacted me urging me to submit the movie and later they informed me that they had created an entirely new winning title for this movie and for me: female adventurer. This made me (and of course still makes me) extremely proud.

Also, I am proud of myself because I never let other people bring me down in the sport. Man, there has been so many episodes where I felt differentiated because I am a woman in the sport and because I had ambitions very early in my paragliding career. So many people felt insulted because I “didn’t take advice” but to be honest those people just never really considered that maybe I did take advice but just not from them. I always had 100 people talking at me, telling me what to do, commenting on my every move (of course also because everything was so accessible and I did put myself out there) and it was really tiring at times. I have met so much resistance sometimes but luckily 95% of my career has been such a wonderful experience. I think those negative experiences affected me a lot because I was so young when I started flying. 
 
A. Ch. : How much time does it take to recover from an accident - overcome black thoughts, get a grip, start a new leaf of live ?
 
S. L. K. : Ugh, tough question, really! In my accident I broke my femur in half, my knee in half, part of my kneecap was missing, my pelvis broke two places and I had several facial- and cranial fractures. I’m 1 year and 1 day in it and I still am facing something like 6 more months if I’m lucky. Mentally I think you never really fully put a lid on an experience like this but I’m not sure. As I said, I’m not done yet.

A. Ch. : How much what you have gone through have shaped you internally, influenced your perception of the world, thinking ?

S. L. K. : Oh man, it’s like everything changed when I crashed. It’s like a crash gives you some kind of unique opportunity to really see how people are. I hate to be saying this because deep inside I’m a huge philanthropist. Crashing has just showed me another aspect of friendship, loyalty and how people act in general. I would like to keep my philanthropic point of view in life but let me say that it’s been really challenged in this time. In this period of time after my crash, I’ve experienced loss of friendship and the beautiful creation of new friendships. I’ve been so surprised in both categories.

A. Ch. : After such experiences, you could say how you can help in minimizing post-accident consequences ?
 
S. L. K. : I mean, it would be a good idea to share my two videos about the crash because I think it could be really useful for other pilots and it contributes to what I’m saying in this interview :

LINK TO PART 1

LINK TO PART 2

A. Ch. : Is there something that you would like to share with other people after an accident to motivate them to act and add confidence in their own strength ?

S. L. K. : I would like to give 5 advice about your flying in general:

1. Follow your gut and instinct. Always. It’s just a healthy and authentic experience in general in life to be following what you find to be important and right to do.
2. Wear a helmet. Always and forever. I know it’s tempting sometimes to let it be at home but just wear it. It seriously feels better to wear one.
3. Be okay to cancel takeoffs every now and again. As I mentioned in the above responses, I think I’m really known to be canceling a lot of my takeoffs. I’m just not always feeling it on take off and it’s been wonderful those times where I feel like it’s really not a problem to be canceling what I’m doing.
4. It’s really important to ground handle. Ground handling is really the most underestimated thing. It gives you confidence and it’s the job half done in a flight if you nail it.
5. Do at least one SIV per year if you’re an active pilot. Knowing what to do in a shitty situation can save your life.

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