Article by Ruben Petrisie
After a wonderful warm-up day and an afternoon devoted to the first rounds of Tow-In on Monday, the small gang of riders was found Tuesday morning at the HQ of the Bonifacio Freestyle Project competition in a beautiful villa situated on the heights of the lagoon Piantarella.
After a quick briefing and explanation of the upcoming program regarding the weather conditions, Thomas Traversa and Cristelle Baud suggested riders to work on their latest footage to be able to set up the best of moves for the video contest.
After a quick briefing and explanation of the upcoming program regarding the weather conditions, Thomas Traversa and Cristelle Baud suggested riders to work on their latest footage to be able to set up the best of moves for the video contest.
The responsible team for producing the first teaser video set for Wednesday night are Sophia Regerbis from Double Four Production and Andraz Zan from Slovenia. They simply took advantage of the calm morning to start of with puting some of the scenes together from the last 2 days, at the same time Project Manager Thomas Traversa was being interviewd by a journalist sent by the L’ équipe21 TV Teamfor the TV SHOW ADRENALINE.
Team World working on the video – Pic: Cristelle Baud
Thomas Traversa Project Manager – Pic: Cristelle Baud
Nicolas Akgazciyan (Leucate), Europe freestyle runner-up in 2010 and now a member of the “Windsurf Team France” made the trip to Bonifacio for the second time and had the follwing to say: This contest is a great opportunity to have a good time with all the Team France members. It also helps me to prepare for the next World Cup Freestyle event mid-July. The spot is ideal, despite the cold water tempratures this year its still perfect to trainfreestyle and jumps with little waves on the sand banks. It fits nicely with such a concept and “Team France” must absolutely win this year.
The Belgian Dieter Van Der Eyken, currently ranked seventh on the Freestyle World Tour is also on his first inviatation on this event: “I had seen pictures of last year as Steven Van Broeckhoeven already been here” so I was really happy to have received an invitation this year because it’s a cool concept, based on “lifestyle”, action and not so much on results. The idea of ??the video contest is truly unique and I also decided to come here because it’s a great caddition to our media coverage on the Internet as an athlete, but also to show what we can do with the freestyle descipline in a place with the looks of the Caribbean.
A thermal breeze was expected in the afternoon but unfortunately it never blew strong enough to start the individual battles. The organization decided to launch a late afternoon Stand Up Paddle team contest which eventually offered a little animation on the beach of Piantarella. The two teams, “World” and “France” were competing in an obviously childish atmosphere…..at the end of the day it was the “World” team that won.
SUP – Pic: Cristelle Baud
Team World – Pic: Cristelle Baud
Tonight the riders will still work on their videos in the luxury villa to refine and to choose their best moves and scenes. The organization has provided them with a good meal prepared by a local catering company who is famous for serving the previous Bonifacio “Freestyle Project” events.
Tomorrow is another day and the program will be adjusted to whatever the unclear weather forecast will bring. Perhaps the second round of Tow In will likely be scheduled if the thermal winds fails to show up.
Light wind freestyle Julien Mas – Pic: Cristelle Baud
