We arrived on the island just ahead of the event, so
headed directly to Cabezo to see what was going
down. The event site was all set up and there was a
buzz on the beach. Equipment covered literally every
grain of sand and competitors were busy setting up
and fine tuning their kit. With light winds for the first
couple of days it made for a relaxed build up, but
with plenty of wind and swell forecast for later in the
week there was promise for a hot competition.
The event officially opened with the competitors
marching through the town, led by a spectacular
drum parade. They made their way from the event
site to the main square where all the riders were
introduced on stage. Being amongst the party
atmosphere and seeing all of the sailors in the flesh
was very cool. It was also really good to see such a
strong group of UK riders out in force. We were
especially excited to see how Adam Lewis followed
up his impressive seventh place result at the
previous event in Pozo. With so many big names and
talented riders across both the men and women’s
fleets, the competition was set to be fierce.
From day three the wind fired up, Cabezo turned on
and the action went off! Huge double forwards, back
loops, wave 360s, goiters and every other wave
move you can imagine were being thrown
everywhere. Cabezo offers a great natural arena for
spectators to view the action straight from the
beach, as a little added bonus it also gives some
decent shelter from getting salt/sand blasted in the
process and there’s a beach bar too. The
competition was getting extremely exciting and as
the first full day came to a close we were already
down to the top four competitors in both fleets.
There were no surprises to see both Philip Koster
and Victor Fernandez in the top four men along with
local legend Alex Mussolini and also our man Adam
Lewis, all still fighting for the top spot.
61
Epic single elimination final
The next day kicked off with ballistic winds – gusting
over 50kts. With a decent swell building the
conditions were set to challenge the riders for an
epic single elimination final. They did not disappoint.
You know it’s seriously windy when the pros are
going full power on 3.0ms! I mean, it was survival
conditions for most but these guys were making it
look easy and going huge in the process. Adam
sailed heroically but was unlucky, missing out by
only a couple of points against first Philip and then
Victor in his heats. This did, however, put him in a
very impressive and well deserved fourth place at
the end of the single elimination.
uk
WIND
SURFING