Sky was definitely the limit

STAN Denham hold on to his breakfast as he defies gravity to join those magnificent men in their flying machines in an aerobatic loop over the skies of Portugal.

High flyers ... crowds line the banks of the River Douro in Porto to see pilots perform manoeuvres for the Red Bull Air Race /Andreas Schaad

WE climb vertically over the airfield. Rural Portugal is no longer visible below and we are momentarily suspended in space and time, the horizon long since vanished and replaced by an expanse of bright blue sky.

After what seems like an eternity, the aircraft stalls and lurches towards the ground in a sickening, stomach-churning, half-spin.

At this moment I know my gut feeling is right: I shouldn't have had the full English breakfast, and the extra sausage now looms as a mistake of epic proportions.

Pilot Sergio Pla, a Spanish aerobatics champion, also clearly worried that I might lose the contents of my stomach (I wouldn't be the first, apparently), breaks the tension and asks: "Hey, es Stan, you hokay?"

"Yes, all good Sergio," I croak, lying. "Loving it ... no problem."

"Good," he says, "so now we do another half-Cuban."

Up we go in another vertical climb, the kind the Red Bull air racers do: the horizon going up on end out the left wing tip a few thousand feet above the countryside at speeds approaching the 400km/h mark. Then I look back over my head at the ground as we go through the loop.

We descend inverted, flip right side up heading straight at the ground, and pull into a shallow climb. We've already done some rolls, pulled a 6-G turn, flown on a knife-edge (wings at right angles to ground) and blasted at break-neck speed through the racing air gate at the end of the runway.

I have a parachute strapped on but, on reflection, it wouldn't have been much use: the little twin-seater Extra, a kind of flying F1 racer, streaks between the air gate metres off the ground. At least the breakfast is still holding. So far.

Then we go inverted. Uh oh. This could be the manoeuvre that sends the rogue snag right over the edge. "Hey, esStan, don't worry," says Sergio, "the plane flies just as well like this as it does right way hup."

At that moment, my whole world literally turned upside down, I can't speak, or reply, and they'll need a crowbar to prise my sweaty hands off the bars on the side of the cockpit. But time, well, it flies, and almost as soon as it's begun, it's over, and we land. Thank God for small mercies.

I hop out, suddenly full of nauseating bravado, nonchalantly undoing the 'chute like a veteran Spit fire ace, reassuring the line-up of victims to follow that, hey, there's nothing to it. But there is and I'm truly in awe of the skills required, despite the queasy, greasy stomach. The day before, thousands of people watched as the Red Bull Air Race rolled into town like Baron von Richthofen's Flying Circus.

The crowds line the banks of the River Douro in beautiful Porto to see the pilots practise their manoeuvres above rooftops that have not changed much in 500 years. The brightly-coloured aircraft dart through the sky above the river like little tropical fish, the perfect complement to washing hanging on a thousand balconies. Engines scream above the noise of the crowd, then drone away into silence towards a setting sun.

But this day, the schedule is for media to have a go, too, before heading back into town to watch the qualifying. The idea, says Red Bull Australia spokeswoman Linda Rychter, is to give us a better understanding of how the pilots feel. In my case, that would be ill.

Yet it does provide insight into what might be a peculiar brand of madness. As we prop later on the Gaia side of the river bank, the port wine cellars, old town and the arch of the 19th century Ponte Dom Luis I bridge connecting the twin cities provide the perfect backdrop to the action, which by consensus has this as the prettiest of race locations so far. Then, somewhere in the distance, beyond the Douro's first bridge, the Arrabida, where the Atlantic meets the river at Foz, a tiny glint appears on the horizon. The race judge calls the pilot in: "You are cleared to enter ... smoke on".

From a distance, spectators hear the shrill note of the engine as the racer descends and guns through the first gate, heading up the winding river just above the blue water. Overworked pistons scream as the plane tips on a knife edge to negotiate a bend.

The pilot cranks the throttle, and the little racer roars past our vantage point and tears through the last gate, climbing vertically right in front of the Ponte Luis, pulling up to 10-Gs as it goes through the loop. It's real "ooh, ah" stuff and the crowd goes mad.

I'm now an instant expert and know what a half-Cuban is – only this one is much lower to the ground. The little racer flips upright, and descends again through the gate and heads back up the river trailing a thick plume of smoke. It's spectacular seat-of-the-pants, against-the-clock flying. Earlier, pilot Frank Versteegh, a big, smiling Dutchman, tries to explain why he does it, but since he was a dancer and choreographer in a previous life, I'm a bit up in the air. When he tells me he likes to take his dog Joe up, I decide quickly that Frank is actually crackers but in that way Australians love.

In reality, Versteegh and his mates have a genuine sense of adventure and a devil-may-care attitude tempered by years of experience and an understanding that centimetres and fractions of seconds separate them from disaster. Last year, after the final race in Perth, Versteegh flew his aircraft to Sydney across the vast expanse of the interior because he wanted to see the country. For much of the way, he simply followed the railway line.

"I love Australia," he says. "I landed at one place and there was a fellow there. He said: `G'day Frank, we've been expecting you'." Versteegh wondered what he meant by "we", since there was no one within coo-ee. He explains: "I asked, `How many people live here?"' The bushie replied: "Here, or the surrounding area?" The area, Versteegh answered. "Oh, two – me and my wife."

Versteegh doesn't make it into the semis in Porto but finishes with a couple of rolls high above the Arrabida to the delight of the 600,000-plus crowd. In the final, Mike Mangold, a daredevil former USAF pilot, loses time extending out of his half-Cubans and is pipped by Briton Steve Jones.

The air race idea was conceived in 2001 and the series now has a huge following, and the races are held at some spectacular locations: this year at Monument Valley in Arizona, Istanbul, Interlaken in Switzerland, London, Rio, Abu Dhabi, Budapest, San Diego and Perth. Organisers expect a crowd of at least 400,000 to line the Swan River on November 3 and 4 for the final race, in Perth.

The writer was a guest of Red Bull.

The Sunday Telegraph