Germany PKRA - 5th

This is the first of the World Cup events that I have come to this year. Its the biggest of the year with great sponsorship and many different brands from headphones, to shower gels to kite brands and more rocking up to show off there product. Its like a mini village built on the sand. For this reason the event is 10 days long. There are thousands of visitors during this time, possibly even tens of thousands and Im pretty sure they all come by bike!



Anyhow after several days of light wind a huge amount of course racing for those inclined we finally had some decent wind for the freestyle competition. When I say decent wind it was somewhere between 30 and 45 knots. It was crazy.



The wind picked up on wedsnesday night and with it the following morning unleashed the carnage. Walking to the kit tent was a mission in itself and on the way there were tents broken, flags going mental, jcb's digging big sand wall sea defenses plus one man out over powered on a 4m kite. There was one thing for sure about this day. You either pumped up only your smallest kite - or you borrowed a smaller one from a seven year old - said seven year old being Steph bridge from Edge watersports youngest son who happily leant me his 4m under the basis that I pulled on 'some depower to prevent the kite from back stalling' and also as long as I was happy to be on a kite with no safety system! Hmm, let me think about that. Its howling onshore wind and Im on a completely alien kite... I took my chances and stuck with my trusty 6m Torch - my favourite kite of my quiver. At least that way i knew if things were going wrong I would know in what way.



Well my first heat was fab. I nailed a strong heat. i dont know how much ground I covered in the tricks I landed but I knew that if held on tight and tried to kepp my kite low then I should pull thorugh strong on the other side. Stoked! It worked. i won my first heat to then come against the leader of this years world tour Bruna Kajyia. Yet again I had a good heat but saw Bruna nail an s bend air pass so i thought why not, lets go for the blind judge. 3 times i tried and I made a pass super high in the air, but my god I ate some shit on the landings (or not landings in this case). for the single elimination Bruna took me down!

The double elimination was held this morning. The wind was perfect for 8m or 10m Torch and I was feeling good. i rode one of my best heats ever landing a railey to blind, down loop to blind, back to blind and blind judge (really neeed to vary up the blind landings). i passed this heat with no problem before coming up against fellow van sharing mate Johara Sykes Davies. This heat I lost the plot, but pulled through strong to take on the ex World Champ Kristin Boese. Still riding strong I took her out also before going up against Angela Peral. By this point there was just 10 minute break between heats and I was feeling the lack of strength. I rode a good heat against her, but I needed a great one and although a very close heat this time it was me going down. I felt that I could have won this one more heat had I had full strength, but it wasn't to be and Im still sitting happily in 5th place.



There are two more days of competition and the freestyle is complete with Kevin Langeree of Naish and Joanna Litwin of Nobile taking first place. Next up the boardercross...