The Adrenaline Rush of Racing Drones

The New Yorker Radio Hour

WNYC Studios and The New Yorker

News, David, Books, Arts, Storytelling, Wnyc, New, Remnick, News Commentary, Yorker, Politics

4.2 • 5.5K Ratings

🗓️ 14 June 2022

⏱️ 16 minutes

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Summary

Ian Frazier, who has chronicled American life for The New Yorker for more than forty years, travelled to a house in Fort Collins, Colorado, where three roommates build, fly, and race drones. Jordan Temkin, Zachry Thayer, and Travis McIntyre were among the early professional drone racers in the sport, piloting the tiny devices through complex courses at upward of eighty miles an hour. Drones have had an enormous impact on military strategy, and the commercial applications seem limitless, but to these pilots drones exist in the strange overlap between pure adrenaline and big money that defines pro sports.

This piece originally aired on February 9, 2018.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is the New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNWC Studios and the New Yorker.
0:09.1	This is the New Yorker Radio Hour, I'm David Remnick.
0:12.6	All over the country this week, from Connecticut to Florida to Washington, qualifying races
0:18.0	are being held for a competition in a sport that you may not have heard a lot about, drone
0:23.9	racing.
0:25.2	The qualifiers continue through mid-July for the multi-GP championship later this year.
0:31.5	So drone racing, what exactly is drone racing?
0:34.9	Let's be clear, these aren't the drones you can buy your kid on Amazon, nor are they
0:39.6	the military drones you may have read about that are flying over Ukraine.
0:44.4	Racing drones are a specialty item, custom built for that purpose alone.
0:49.3	At least one drone was clocked at 180 miles an hour.
0:53.8	I first heard about all this from staff writer Ian Frazier, who reported for us on drone
0:58.3	racing in the sport's early days.
1:01.0	Starting in an event, build as the drone national championships in 2016.
1:06.9	Multi-rail racing the 2016 US drone national.
1:10.8	Thank you to all our local corporate and national partners who are getting to you in just
1:14.8	a little bit as we make history.
1:16.3	It was one of those things that happened early on in the development of a sport, I guess,
1:22.8	and that it was not really very well thought out.
1:25.4	My last guy goes down, arm your cop, arm your copters, we are on the tone in less than five.
1:37.3	You couldn't really tell who was in first and who was in second, because drones are small,
1:43.0	and drones can go really fast.
	...

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