Marcella Uchoa

Do you have a nickname that you go by?
Some friends call me Marcellinha, Má, and some foreign friends call me Marce.

Where do you live?
Poços de Caldas, Minas Gerais, Brazil.

What do you do for work?
I’m a marine biologist, and I did my MSc on sharks. But since a few years ago I became a professional paragliding pilot, dedicating my whole life to flying.

What year, and how old were you when you started flying?
I started in 2010, when I was 22. I did a skydiving tandem and was in love with it right away. Although the skydiving course was very expensive and as I knew the paragliding community in my city and there was no woman flying back then, they offered me the course, and that’s how I started. Then since the very first time I took my feet off the ground, I was in love with paragliding.

What other passions do you have, or activities do you enjoy?
My great passion is nature. I love being in the ocean, fishing, outdoors, in the mountains, waterfalls, trails. I really want to learn skydiving, as I did start flying because of it.

Why is flying important to you, and what does flying mean to you?
Flying is everything to me, I just cannot imagine my life without flying. I wake up every day looking to the sky, looking to see if the conditions are good, which direction is the wind, how the clouds look. It is something that is part of me, just like my heart beating. There is nothing like thermalling from the ground and going to the cloud base. 

3 Women’s World Records 2018
Women’s Champion PWC Brazil 2019
2nd Woman PWC Argentina 2019
3rd Woman PWC Brazil 2017
4th Woman FAI World Championship 2019
9th overall in task 7 of FAI World Championship 
2x Women’s Brazilian Champion 2018/2019
7th overall Brazilian League 2019

Do you have any goals, dreams or plans for the next 1-2 years that you want to share?
I really want to break the world record again and get better results in competitions. And fly as much as I can.