Two weeks ago I flew to Poland’s capital, Warsaw for an indoor windsurfing competition. The first indoor event in the last 8 years. I was really excited going there, because as well as being Canadian I’m also Polish, both my parents being from there.
I flew there with a spot in the trials in both the jump and freestyle disciplines. I wanted to do slalom, but looked like many other people with more slalom experience did too, so I wasn’t awarded a wildcard for that.
The event was held in a massive stadium in Warsaw called the Stadiom Narodowy. It can seat 60,000 spectators. They put in a pool about waist deep, 90m long by 30m wide, and lined it with 30 high powered fans, blowing 30 knots by the fans, down to around 10 knots just 20m away, meaning the conditions were challenging.
In the trials I managed a few simple moves that helped me qualify for the main event; spock, shaka, grubby, flaka.
In the jump discipline I didn’t make it through the trials. I had a bad crash on the first run, and a forward attempt on the second. I learnt that for the ramp I would need slightly different gear, as my small freestyle fin and board weren’t really going straight at the narrow fin slot on the ramp. Here’s a video of my first attempt crash, as you can see I’m not really going straight before the ramp 😉 : Ramp Crash
In the main event on Friday night we had 2 attempts each way, with the best move on each tack counting. I managed a double spock into the wall of the pool on starboard tack, but on port I frustratingly messed up both my shaka attempts, so I finished 10th in the event, not qualifying for the 4-man final on Saturday.
All in all a great event, and nice to see so many people come out to the stadium to watch us. There were over 40000 spectators there that weekend split between Friday and Saturday.
When I got home to Toronto I quickly went on a little roadtrip with some friends and my sponsor Makani Fins. We sailed at a few spots including Lac Champlain and Cape Cod, you’ll be seeing a movie from that trip shortly, in the meantime a couple photos and screenshots below…
Now it’s time to pack for Sylt, Germany, where I’ll be competing in the Davidoff Cool Water PWA Grand Slam from September 27th – October 5th.
