Albuquerque Champion: What It Takes to Win First Place at the World's Largest Balloon Festival
People always ask: "Have you ever competed?"
Yes. And in October 2024, I won first place overall at the Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta—the largest hot air balloon festival in the world.
Let me tell you what that means, and why it matters.
The Competition
The Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta isn't just beautiful—it's intense. Six hundred balloons fill the sky over nine days. About two hundred pilots compete over four competition days. Eight hundred thousand spectators watch from below over the week, bundled against the October morning cold of the high desert.
And "racing" is a bit of a misnomer. This isn't about speed. It's about precision, control, and reading the invisible.
The Challenge: Drop a marker from your balloon as close as possible to targets on the ground. Accumulate the most points over multiple flights. Sounds simple until you remember one crucial fact: in a balloon, there's no steering wheel. No flaps. No controls except up and down.
To move left or right, you have to read the winds at different altitudes and use them. You're not controlling the balloon—you're negotiating with the atmosphere.
What you're really doing is testing your navigation. You're making split-second decisions about altitude changes, reading how the wind shifts at 100 feet versus 500 feet versus 1,000 feet. You're calculating approach angles in your head while managing propane burn and watching two hundred other balloons around you.
The difference between first place and tenth can be inches on a target drop. One wrong read of the wind, one hesitation, one moment of doubt—and you're out of contention.
A Family Legacy
My grandparents started ballooning in Albuquerque before I was born. My grandfather, a U.S. Air Force veteran, flew "Dad's Gone Bananas." My grandmother piloted "I'm Bananas II."
Growing up, I heard the stories. The early morning launches. The thrill of competition. The community of pilots who became family. From a young age, I knew I wanted to follow them into the sky.
When I got my first balloon, I named it "Grand Banana" in their honor. Carrying on the family tradition felt like the most natural thing in the world. My current balloon—my competition winner—is "Grand Banana 2.0."
In 2021, I competed at Albuquerque and it was my best showing and I came in fourth. Close, but not close enough. I thought that was great but dreamed of more.
Every flight from then refining my skills and in 2024, it all came together.
The Art of Precision
What does it take to win at Albuquerque?
Navigation Skills: Reading wind patterns at different altitudes. Understanding how air moves over terrain. Every flight is different. Every day the atmosphere gives you a new puzzle to solve.
Precision Control: Swooping low—sometimes incredibly low—to drop markers at just the right moment. You're managing your descent rate, your forward speed (controlled entirely by wind), and your timing. All while keeping your balloon stable and safe.
Weather Judgment: Ballooning is extremely weather-dependent. No flying in rain. No lightning risk, period. Winds can't exceed 11 miles per hour. Making the call on whether to fly or wait is part of the competition. Push too hard in marginal conditions and you risk everything. Wait too long and you miss your window.
Consistency: One perfect flight doesn't win. You need to perform at your best, flight after flight, day after day. The competition runs over multiple days, and your score accumulates. A bad drop on day two can cost you the championship, no matter how perfect day one was.
Mental Toughness: When you're at 800 feet, approaching a target, with fifty other balloons doing the same thing, you have to trust your training. Second-guessing yourself is how you lose.
The Flights
Each competition flight is its own story. You launch before sunrise, when the high desert air is still and cold. Your crew helps you inflate the balloon in random lots, propane burners roaring to life, the envelope slowly rising against the stars.
Then you're off. Climbing into the dawn, watching the sky lighten from deep blue to that perfect golden light. Below you, the New Mexico landscape spreads out—mesas and mountains and the grid of Albuquerque coming to life.
But you can't just enjoy the view. You're working. Watching your instruments. Feeling the wind. Looking for your target. Planning your approach.
Other balloons are all around you—some climbing, some descending, some drifting on winds you can't feel from where you are. It's like a three-dimensional chess game where the board keeps changing.
And then the approach. You commit. You start your descent. You're reading the wind, making tiny corrections, watching the target grow larger below you. At the perfect moment, you drop your marker.
Then you wait to see where it lands.
The Moment
Standing at the awards ceremony, holding that first-place trophy, with my wife Cassie and our kids Cora and Corbin watching—that was everything.
My parents were there. My grandparents' legacy floating in the air around us. Three generations of balloonists, and I'd just won at the fiesta where it all began for our family.
Albuquerque Champion.
What It Means
This sport has given me so much. The ability to share the sky with passengers over Kansas City. The connection to my grandparents' passion. The challenge of mastering something that can never truly be mastered—you're always learning, always adapting, always respecting what the wind decides to do.
Winning at Albuquerque validated years of dedication. But more than that, it reminded me why I love this: the impossibility of it.
You're floating in a wicker basket, sometimes at 10,000 feet, sometimes at 200 feet. You're controlling a 75-foot balloon above your head with nothing but heat and judgment and years of experience. You have no direct control over where you go—only indirect control through reading and using the wind.
And somehow, against all odds, you can place a marker within inches of a target.
That's the magic of ballooning. Every flight is both science and art, precision and surrender, control and trust. You master the technical skills—burner management, weight distribution, altitude control. But you also have to let go, to work with forces larger than yourself, to become part of the wind rather than fighting against it.
Flying Over Kansas City
The skills I sharpened competing in Albuquerque make every flight over Kansas City better. I can read the wind patterns over our city, find the smoothest air, take passengers on routes that showcase the best views at the perfect altitude.
When I'm flying a sunrise flight over KC with a couple celebrating their anniversary, or taking a family up for their first balloon ride, that precision training matters. It means smoother flights, better navigation, safer landings.
Competition makes you sharper. It makes you better. And ultimately, it makes the experience better for everyone who flies with me.
The Invitation
If you want to experience what it's like to fly this way—to float over Kansas City and understand why someone would dedicate their life to chasing wind—I'd love to take you up.
You won't be dropping markers on targets. But you'll feel what it's like to move through the sky with precision and grace. To read the wind. To float in that perfect silence punctuated only by the burner.
And maybe, just maybe, you'll understand why some of us can't imagine doing anything else.
I promise: the view from a championship balloon is something special.
