Event: PWA Indoor Exhibition 2014
Date: Sept 5 – Sept 7, 2014
Location: National Stadium, Warsaw, Poland
The last windsurfing indoor exhibition event took place in Ghent in Belgium in 2006. This weekend, 8 years later, sees the return of an Indoor windsurfing event in Poland’s National Stadium in Warsaw playing host. Yesterday, on Friday Sept. 5, the first rounds of the men’s and women’s slalom, men’s freestyle and men’s jump got finished. Tonight (20pm CET) the finals in each discipline will take place.
Read more about yesterday…
FREESTYLE
Format: 2 attempts on each tack with the best on each tack counting.
The French windsurfer Nicolas Akgazcyian dominated the freestyle discipline on the first day of the PWA Indoor Exhibition. Nicolas, together with Taty Frans, Max Matissek and Rafael de Windt qualified for the big final tonight, Saturday Sept 6 (8pm CET). Quite interesting is, that all three riders, except Taty, made it through the trials to the main event. Nicolas performed his moves with ease and made them look very dynamic. No shaking, no wet landing, just clean. He just crashed a Gozzada attempt, where he started from the ramp in switch position and back to the sail. His other moves a Switch Chacho, Shaka 360 and Chacho were brilliant. The other three qualificants, Max Matissek, Rafael de Windt and Taty Frans showed high consistency and clean landings.
It is a pity that only the top 4 are qualified for the final and not top 8, like in the jump category.
What else?
Antony Ruenes, who was one of the favorites and dominated the trials, crashed all his moves and was not able to land one clean trick.
Nick van Ingen, who landed a Spock Culo in the trials, was not able to show the big tricks and did not qualify.
Davy Scheffers nailed an amazing Ponch in his second attempt.
It seemed that Gollito Estredo didn’t find the real rhythm and was not able to show big tricks.
Steven van Broeckhoven was the only one who landed outside the pool during a Spock attempt.
Result Freestyle (only top 4 are in the final)
1. Nicolas Akgazcyian
2. Taty Frans
3. Max Matissek
4. Rafael de Windt
5. Rick Jendrusch
6. Tonky Frans
7. Dieter van der Eyken
8. Davy Scheffers
SLALOM
Format: Figure 8 course
The Slalom fleet was a wild mix of slalom sailors, freestylers and wave riders. In the end it was again Nicolas Akgazcyian who showed good starts and speed and qualified for the final together with Ben Proffitt (who was digging out his old JP board from the last indoor event in Belgium) and the real slalom pros Andrea Rosati and Matteo Iachino. All four, who qualified for the final are really good all-rounders and all of them can freestyle, wave ride and race. For the indoor slalom you definitely need to be quick and agile at the start and around the jibe marks and it seemed that the sailors starting in the most downwind position had a slight advantage, because their „gates“ opened first and they got clean air/wind.
In the women’s fleet slalom specialist Lena Erdil, freestyler Arrianne Aukes, reigning Slalom World Champ Delphine Cousin and Polish RS-X racer Zofia Klepacka managed to qualify for the top 4.
Finalist Men: Nicolas Acgazcyian, Andrea Rosati, Matteo Iachino, Ben Proffitt
Finalist Women: Lena Erdil, Arrianne Aukes, Delphine Cousin, Zofia Klepacka
JUMP
17 windsurfers were competing in the jump discipline. Each of them had three attempts. Lucky loser from the trials, Antoine Martin, showed the best jump in the last round, a perfectly landed Backloop, which got rewarded with 28 points out of 30. Also qualifying are Ricardo Campello, who landed a perfect Pushloop in the last round, Thomas Traversa with a Forward, Jules Denel with a Forward, Alex Mussolini with a Forward, Jamie Hancock with a Pushloop, Andrea Rosati with a Forward and Ben Proffitt with a Forward, too. We saw a lot of Forwards…wet Forwards, crashed Forwards, all kind of Forwards.
What else?
Ricardo Campello and Maciek Rutkowski had definitely the hardest crashes. These crashes make you realize how difficult and dangerous this discipline is.
Result Jump 1st round
1. Antoine Martin
2. Ricardo Campello
3. Thomas Traversa
4. Jules Denel
5. Alex Mussolini
6. Jamie Hancock
7. Andrea Rosati
8. Ben Proffitt
©Continentseven 2014, Pics: John Carter/PWA Worldtour & Windpic.de
