At around midday the sky cleared up and with the sun, the wind came. Head judge Duncan Coombs wasted no time in unleashing the freestyle fleet onto the water at 12:30pm. 20 heats of the men and two heats of the women´s fleet got finished. Youp Schmit, Steven van Broeckhoven, Phil Soltysiak, Kiri Thode, Quincy Offringa, Taty Frans, Dieter van der Eyken and Gollito Estredo are left in the men´s fleet and in the ladies, Yoli de Brendt, Laure Treboux, Arrianne Aukes and Sarah-Quita Offringa will fight for the top 4 positions tomorrow.

The PWA racecrew definitely pushed extremely hard to start the event, which made in the end 20 men and 2 ladies heat possible. In the first round, the wind was definitely on the limit and we saw an upset with the early out of German top freestyler Tilo Eber against young Loick Spicher from Switzerland. Loick had the chance to pass again due to the fact that his opponent Yegor Popretinskiy just broke the masttop of his sail some seconds before his heat. But the Russian got immediately help from Andy Chambers and could beat Spicher.

Yegor Popretinskiy

Gollito Estredo - no handed

 

The current top 3 of the world, Steven van Broeckhoven, Kiri Thode and Gollito Estredo impressed in the difficult conditions. They landed most of their difficult moves in the single elimination and made it into the top 8. The PWA writes: “The highest scoring heat of the day was awarded to slick Belgian superstar, Steven Van Broeckhoven. Van Broeckhoven earned himself twenty-seven out of a possible thirty points in his heat against Christofer Kalk, landing monster Shakas, ankle dry Culos and enormous Ponches.”

 

In the two ladies heats we saw no big surprises. Laure Treboux and Sarah-Quita Offringa were both on fire. Laure landed a perfect switch stance Flaka and Sarah-Quita impressed with a clean Toad. Into the top 4 made it as well Yoli Freites de Brendt and Arianne Aukes, who could defeat Xenia Kessler.

The skippersmeeting tomorrow is set for 10:30 with a first possible start at 11:00.

 

Here you can watch a clip by the Japanese “Kuma” with some action from today

 

 

 

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