Korea & Japan Slalom!
June 7, 2017Fuerteventura world cup 2017
September 25, 2017While planning my trip to Gran Canaria this year I was on a mission.
I wanted to arrive early so I’d get completely dialed into the conditions.
I envisioned myself landing backloops and solid taka’s.
Maybe even some goiters on the wave.
So on the 10th of June, 5 weeks ahead of the contest I arrived in GC, determined
However, due to some more Calima than usual we got a couple of unusually windless days for that time of the year. I didn’t get as much as training in as I was hoping for. I mean, there were a bunch of good sessions, but it takes way more time to get consistent in certain moves to be able to land them in a contest.
Added to that over the winter I’ve learnt to tweak my pushies but as a result I couldn’t stop myself from tweaking so if I didn’t go high enough I wouldn’t land them. Eventually I got it back though.
Having said that, there were also a couple of days with unusually big waves as well. Those two days were absolutely epic. I was sailing overpowered on 3,3 in 3-4m waves. It was breaking in one line across the bay. The action on the water that day was unreal. That was definitely one of my highlights this year.
It seems like I go through the same motions every year in Pozo.
I train in pretty windy conditions and think I’m ready.
And on competition day it goes from pretty windy, to extremely windy.
I end up sailing my 3,3 which I’ve barely used during training.
At this point I’m usually just happy I survive the heat and am surprised that I’m still busting out pushloops and forwards in such strong conditions.
All in all in Pozo I had quite good heats, but I didn’t go for broke in the two heats that mattered the most. So first I lost against Iballa. And then I lost against Lina Erpenstein who really stepped it up this year. I wasn’t too bummed about finishing 4th, as long as I would get a second chance in the double elimination.
When we finally ran the double I was up against Justyna who was making a nice come back in the double. I could see she was fired up. On the water I couldn’t find the right ramps and my tweaking habit came back so I didn’t land my pushloops. I was punishing myself trying those pushies. It was hard to get that second jump in that heat so I couldn’t keep it together since I was struggling between going for wave rides or sailing up and looking for a ramp and finally I didn’t do well in either.
I don’t usually lose it during heats, but I came back to shore defeated knowing that I had lost. I’ve heard that finishing 4th place is the worst, but in the end finishing 5th place in the double elimination is the most damaging as it means you lost three heats in a row haha. In the end, losing didn’t bother me because at that point finishing fourth or fifth didn’t matter much to me. I was just disappointed with my sailing.
Anyway at the same time I was happy for Justyna as she sailed great and deserved that win!
I got over it quickly as I was staying the house with some fun loving girls like Maria, Serena, Arrianne and lina ! This was 5 weeks to remember for me.
Not everything is about the contest but what you make of your time there while training for it. It was a blast! My highlight was spending my 26th birthday there and making everyone play Musical chairs !!
5th place in Pozo. On to the next contest!