The Gran Canaria Wind and Waves Festival 2015 marks again the opening of the PWA Wave world tour. Daida Moreno, Iballa Moreno and their team have been organizing the event for the last 3 years. We hooked up with the twins for more background info on the event and the status quo.
Gran Canaria Wind and Waves Festival 2015
CONTINENTSEVEN: You have been organizing the PWA Gran Canaria Wind and Waves Festival for the fourth consecutive year. Only a few weeks are left until the first day of competition, the event dates are confirmed and marks the opening of the 2015 PWA wave tour. Is this something special to organize the opening event?
DAIDA: For us this event had always been special, not only cause it marks the start of the wave tour, but also because it takes place at our home spot. There is a lots of responsibility involved in the organization of a World Cup event, but the team makes it really easy going and at the end, everything together makes it special.
CONTINENTSEVEN: The Gran Canaria Wind and Wave Festival is the baby of you both and your windsurfing club, who does a lot of work behind the scenes during the year and during the event. How much enthusiasm does it need to realize such a big project year by year?
DAIDA: You definitely need to have a lot of enthusiasm to organize something so big. There are two differences between our event and the rest of the events on tour: We do not work for money (unluckily we still don’t have enough sponsors support for this) and we work really hard to make much more with less money. Obviously, if we would have the budget of any other event, our job would be easier, but this is not the case. We always try to look for strategies to get more for less money. For us it is also really important to invite the international and national press to come to Gran Canaria and cover this event. So we invest 20% of our budget for this.
Daida Moreno & Iballa Moreno – Pic: PWA/John Carter
CONTINENTSEVEN: What are your personal goals for 2015? Did you prepare well during the winter and do you feel ready to compete at your home spot?
DAIDA: This year has been really hectic for me. I am at the moment finishing university (physiotherapy degree), I committed four years to my studies and combined it with windsurfing. It is really hard to do both things at the same time, but after all this time I have learnt to manage my time better. Even though it has been really hard, I try to focus much more in everything I do, so it becomes really productive. As I was last year 5 months off the water due to my foot injury, this year I had recovered really well and had more time for my training too, as this winter has been really good in Pozo for wave sailing. I feel good, and sailed a lot, but in competition you never know how is going to be. Iballa is for sure the one to beat, as she is really fit sailing and training every day in SUP, while I was more with physiotherapy and windsurfing in my free time. We will see what happens. I just want a good organized event, good conditions and have fun. The rest will come alone.
IBALLA: This season I got injured in my left knee at the end of January and I haven’t been able to train properly even since then. I’m hoping to be back in a few weeks and give myself some time in Pozo. I am looking forward to this years GCWWF 2015…looking forward to have the World Cup again at home!
Daida Moreno with a ride for the cam (Pic: Dani Miguel)
CONTINENTSEVEN: What will happen during the festival?
DAIDA: We offer a really good and hectic program for the whole week. We offer every day activities for kids, health and sports programs inside the tent, good food and good music with live music and dj’s, beer party, Canary music, humor night,… There won’t be time to be bored as we really hope the wind and the waves are with us every day. We will release all the details through our official Facebook @Gran Canaria Wind & Waves Festival.
CONTINENTSEVEN: Will you again have a big screen and live streaming?
DAIDA: Yes, we believe it is really important to have a quality live TV streaming and also to show it live inside the tent with a big screen (video wall). The screen will be showing also daily videos, sponsor advertisements and all the interviews every day.
A view inside the tent with a video wall and live action
CONTINENTSEVEN: Are there any differences compared to the last years’s event?
DAIDA: During the last four years we had changed every detail to have a much better event, and the experience will always give us new ideas to have a better event. For example, beside many small details in organization, image, budget distribution…, we will also move all the judging containers more towards the south, so judges will have better and closer views to the bunker, which is the main competition area. A positive change is also that we will start the PWA event on Sunday 12th (having a big welcome party the night before), and we will finish the PWA event on saturday 18th. The festival dates are from July 11th until Sunday 19th. We distinguish festival dates from PWA World cup dates. Like this we hope to have more visitors to the event. The last day of the Festival (July 19th) we will do a windsurfing outlet and beach cleaning, with also a small forward loop clinic with some of the best sailors of the world.
CONTINENTSEVEN: Will you run a junior competition again?
DAIDA: For us is really important to have junior competition. We have kids coming from other islands to Pozo. This year we have a bigger group of youth kids sailing every day in Pozo and it’s important for them to get a chance to proof themselves there, and enjoy the week with the best wave sailors of the world. The young people are the future of our sport. We invite all the young people from Europe to come and enjoy the event with the local boys and compete in a PWA event.
The juniors on the podium in 2014
CONTINENTSEVEN: After two years with relatively unusual Pozo conditions, this year will be windy and wavy, we are sure.
DAIDA: We really hope we get the best conditions after two frustrating years on a road. This year the event dates are good for wind and we hope to get the right swell all week.
CONTINENTSEVEN: Who are the favorites 2015?
DAIDA: In the men division I think Philip Köster and Victor Fernandez will be the main favourites, but I have been watching some local riders this winter and I believe there will be some surprises. In the women division Iballa will be the one to beat as she is really fit and standing still on the top.
CONTINENTSEVEN: Gran Canaria recently suffered a Russian fishing trawler “Oleg Naydenov” accident in the harbor of Las Palms and oil was swept towards the shores further south of Maspalomas. Is the beach of Pozo Izquierdo affected by that environmental disaster?
DAIDA: We had been following closely the big environment disaster we had here in Gran Canaria, but for now it has not affected our beach. We are really sad and disappointed with how things had been done, and now we are just hoping the robot close the big hole of oil still coming to the surface from the bottom of the sea. As we are really concerned in how important is to keep our beach clean, we will also organize a beach cleaning last Sunday July 19.
©continentseven.com 2015
