On the 6th day of the Worldcup on Fuerteventura the world´s best freestylers had their first day of competition. At the beginning of the day the wind was too light for the start of the freestyle competition, but the watercolors were amazing. Yoli de Brendt: “Wow, it looks like on Bonaire today!”
During the day the wind picked up and the freestylers prepared their big sails. Around 16.00 the conditions were suitable and the show was on! A lot of specatators lined up along the shore to watch the first and second round of the single elimination and they witnessed some outstanding heats.
Dieter van der Eyken
The best heat was definitely Kiri Thode´s heat. “Thode effortlessly rotated through incredible spock-culos and massive double air funnels as he delivered the best performance of the competition so far,” Chris Yates, press manager af the PWA, commented Kiri´s heat. He was the only sailor, who did not struggle at any second and never crashed.
In total, 15 heats got finished in very unusual flat water, medium wind conditions. All of the top sailors were able to adapt their sailing style to the conditions. Current tourleader Gollito Estredo spinned through some massive moves with a lot of height, Taty Frans nailed the Kono of the day, Tonky Frans showed his moves in his typical “Tonky style” and showed a high diversity, Björn Saragoza landed a perfect Air Funnell, very clean Burners and Shaka 360 and Steven van Broeckhoven had a solid heat with Burners and Konos.
Dieter van der Eyken, Davy Scheffers, Julien Mas and Yegor Popretinskiy made it into the next round. “This time it was a really close decison”, Dieter commented his heat against Dutch Marteen van Ochten. “I wanted to change from 4,8 to 4,4 just, because the wind picked up before my heat, but I could not get my 4,4 off the other board as the rising tide covered my gear with so much sand. So I had to use my 4,8, which felt overpowered a bit. In the end I saved some good moves on the way out, what gave me the advantage in the end!”
PICTURES FROM THE FIRST DAY OF COMPETITION
Christopher Kalk, who spent several months at the Blue Lagoon in Egypt, landed a lot of the latest freestyle tricks and defeated German Tilo Eber in the second round. In the British duel in between Andy Chambers and Max Rowe, Andy took the advantage. It was the first duel of the two British sailors, since Max has entered the tour in 2010 and it was a very close one. Max promises to fight back and tweets after the heat: “Congrats dude! Super close but diversity let me down. Bit gutted! Will get you one day soon… haha!”
Any young upcoming stars? No one of the newcomers made it through the second round, but a few of them qualified for the top 32 with a really solid performance. Just to name the most outstanding one: Jacopo Testa from Italy, who sailed with immense speed. Rafael de Windt from the Island of Curacao and Tony Möttus from Estonia. Let´s see, how they will perform in the double elimination.
It´s great to see a lot of young blood on tour and we are sure that most of them will fight for top rankings in the near future!
Gollito wants more wind
[…] Yesterday was the first day of the PWA Freestyle competition on Fuerteventura. In the late afternoon, the wind has picked up and the first two rounds of the Single Elimination ladder got finished. Josh Willmot produced a nice little clip featuring yesterday´s freestyle action. If you want to read more about yesterday, check out our report here. […]