Last weekend the Mission XL event took place at Brouwersdam, Netherlands. The Dutch freestyle windsurfer Rick Jendrusch reports from the event.
Rick Jendrusch
Nationality: Dutch
Sailnumber: H-120
I like: windsurfing, hanging out with friends, travelling around the world
I don´t like: reading books, waiting for wind
Biggest succes in windsurfing: Prokids World Champion U-20 in 2011
Sponsors: Mystic, Severne, F2, Zeil-& Surfcentrum Brouwersdam, ChocoFins and DirtyDog
What a weekend! It was a perfect weekend! We had good wind and a lot of people and the sun was shining as well.
SATURDAY
We started the weekend with the registration at 9:00 and we had 272 competitors this year. We are very proud on that.
Then we had the skippers meeting and at 12:00 we started the competition in very good wind conditions! We sailed 3 slalom rounds. Between the heats we did also the “Battle of the Giants” with national and international Giants, like Steven van Broeckhoven, Gollito Estredo, Youp Schmit, me, Dieter van der Eyken, Nick van Ingen, Eva Oude Ophuis, Maarten van Ochten and not to forget Dorian van Rijsselberghe. The freestyle show was perfect we had good wind and everybody was super enthusiast!
After the freestyle action, we welcomed Dorian van Rijsselberghe, the Olympic gold medalist from Holland. Directly after this, the long distance race got started. Everybody was allowed to take part without registration. In the end, we had around 400 sailors who were sailing the long distance race! That is a great number! In the evening everybody got ready for the BBQ and the big Mission party and Tombola, with a lot of prices. It was a long and crazy night for everybody!
SUNDAY
On the next day it was pretty hard to wake up, but 10:30 the next competition got started. We did another 3 rounds of Slalom with even better winds as the day before! The wind was strong and everybody was fully powered. For the crowd it was amazing to watch, as the finishing line was in front of the beach.
We did a freestyle battle again with all the freestyle-pros. They were on their 4,4 and 4,8m2 sails, so perfect conditions for a sick show, from Shove it Spocks to Double Burners! Steven and Gollito were boosting the level!
Then we started the final slalom races of the competition, the 20 best riders of all the 6 rounds were in the finals, which means all the best riders against each other. It was so nice to watch from the beach to see amazing starts and good jibes and the finish in front of the beach!
At 17:00 we had the price giving and another big tombola!
The winners of the Slalom:
Pro-Fleet: Adriaan van Rijsselberghe
Masters: Sieger Boonstra
Men: Robin Koeleman
Ladies: Lillian de Geus
Guys: Matthijs van’t Hof
Chicks: Sara Wennekes
Boys: Lars van Someren
Girls: Emily Hall
PICTURES FROM THE EVENT
