PWA Lanazarote Day 1

Pic PWA/Carter

So, Day 1 is over and done with and we managed to finish a whole double elimination of freestyle.  There were many surprises and quite a few upsets in the single elimination.  I advanced through my heat against Jakub Kosmoski from Poland.  We both sailed an absolute shocker!!  The waves and the wind picked up during the heat and for some reason I felt compelled to try a back loop!!  What Muppet!  I just about managed to link up a few moves but nothing special.  Luckily for me Jakub also sailed a bad heat.

After that I went straight into the heat against the current world champion from Margarita Gollito Estredo and I sailed an even worse heat than the one before!  He was ripping though and carried on ripping the whole day.  This left me in 17th place after the single elimination.  Ricardo Campello came out fighting and won the single, Gollito was second and an on form Kiri Thode from Bonaire took third place.  One main stand out was Nicholas Agazian from France; he sailed really well with super powerful and quick moves to get him in to 4th place.

In the double elimination I had to wait for the winner of the heat between Tricksionary editor Michael Rossmeier and new boy Philip Stosijack from Canada.  Both sailed well but it was the Canadian that took the honours.  I had a good heat against Phil and advanced through to the next round against Normen Gunzlein from Germany.

We both sailed well but Normen managed to bust out some big air moves like Burners and big ponches.  The judges seem to be scoring the big air moves higher than low slidey moves this year.

Standouts were definitely the Frenchies!!  They were ripping!  Also Kiri Thode from Bonaire was doing his usual spinning around 25 times in a heat.  Still the best and most radical person on the water was definitely Gollito from Margarita.  He had it all, pushies, burners, air chachoo and more.  He definitely deserved the wind and I reckon he will take the title again this year.

Stay tuned for some more!!