With the recent acquisition of a single engine-plane pilot’s license, it seems there’s few things left in the world of flight that Othar Lawrence hasn’t yet explored then mastered. One of the world’s top paragliding pilots for more than a decade, Lawrence is also an accomplished BASE jumper, skydiver and ultralight pilot. He’s something of a philosopher, too.
PHILOSOPHY
“To learn to fly more and more stuff, that’s kind of a lifelong goal,” he says. “Hang gliding’s on the list and aerobatic planes, for sure. But mostly the goal is to be an old pilot.”
Lawrence, or “OJ” (Othar John), has captured U.S. National and North American titles, perfected aerobatic maneuvers that befuddle even the most jaded skydivers, and tackled one-of-kind adventures, like a two-weeklong trans-Andean paragliding odyssey with friends and teammates Will Gadd and Chris Santacroce in 2003. All the while, as the longtime captain of the Red Bull Air Force, Lawrence has worked passionately to promote free-flight sports.
KEEPING UP WITH THE SANTACROCE’S
Born in 1974, Lawrence grew up in the funky mountain town of Carbondale, Colo. Participating in all things alpine, favorite pastimes included skiing, snowboarding and mountain-biking. He also had a friend from childhood, Santacroce (Lawrence and Santacroce’s dads grew up together, too), who was getting into this new sport called paragliding. It was 1994.
Santacroce had by then relocated to the Salt Lake City area, and Lawrence was there attending college. “If I wanted to hang out with him, I pretty much had to learn how to paraglide,” says Lawrence (who lives in SLC today.) Three short years later, in 1997, OJ became the youngest U.S. National Champion ever and the first American to win the competition. In 1998, he took his skills further and bested the whole continent for the North American Championship.
After mastering the skill-set for traditional cross country-style paragliding, OJ and other pilots began experimenting with aerobatics. And as it turned out — no real surprise here — loops, spins, spirals and barrel-rolls up to five Gs made for amazing competitions as well as stunning demonstrations. Nowadays, as manager of the Red Bull Air Force, Lawrence is frequently on the road to the next demo — up to about 50 a year — sometimes wearing the hat of event organizer and the helmet of athlete at the same time.
Fans’ reactions to typical RBAF demonstrations, according to OJ, go something like this: “Scared. Scared. Then relieved. Then really impressed. Like, ‘Wow, you guys were coming in so fast we thought you were gonna die, and then you landed right on the spot.’ So they’re engaged, for sure.”
IN IT FOR THE LONG RUN
A typical day for OJ might involve getting up at 5 a.m., hiking for 3,000 feet above his Utah home, then skiing back down to be at his desk by 9 a.m. in order to conduct (what OJ likes to call) “aerial marketing.” Come afternoon, if the thermals are good, it’s time for flying. These days, Lawrence is committed to being the most well-rounded airman he can be.
“Just recently learning how to fly airplanes was a great learning experience. Awesome. A lot of my skills translated well, and I’m encouraged to continue taking on new challenges,” he says.
Looking forward, OJ is philosophical about continuing to push the boundaries of flight. “Just surviving aviation and especially sport-aviation the way I’ve gone about it, it’s given me a really good perspective about how to do it safely over the long run,” he says. “When I learned BASE jumping” — about five years ago — “I told myself I wasn’t going to go about it the way I did with paragliding. Number one, I had a couple of big scares [paraglding] — times when I crashed and shoulda got hurt. Well, you don’t have a whole lot of those in your life. And then, learning something like BASE jumping, maybe you don’t get any of those.”
“And so I didn’t open it up quite as much before I had the [BASE jumping] skills,” Lawrence continues. “You can also keep going through life without thinking about it — and a lot of people do. But now that I’ve got all these experiences, even if I’m doing something new like flying planes, I’m already thinking like an aviator and what it’s going to take to do it right.”
Plus – no kidding – OJ Lawrence really can work wonders with a sewing machine. When you’re a paragliding champion pushing the boundaries of your sport, you can’t always find exactly the gear you need, so you make it. Simple as that.
And as if all this weren’t enough, OJ’s Red Bull Air Force teammates have gotten him completely hooked on skydiving, BASE jumping, and flying an ultralight. “It’s great learning all these new air sports,” he says. “I’ve spent enough time in airplanes to realize that looking through that little square piece of glass just sucks compared to being out there under a canopy, flying an ultralight, or falling to the ground at 150mph. Gimme more!”
