9th place in Austria!

PWA Austria


My best result so far and I'm stoked. I had an epic road trip driving down to the event which took 25 hours in a two van convoy. The wind was forecast to be light for the weekend so we all made the most out of the big party scene in Podersdorf but I made sure I was rested and ready for the wind forecast at the end of the week.


The normal conditions that the tour has become a custom to in Austria are gusty 5.7 weather. So it was a bit of a shock when it kicked in with around 30 knots on the penultimate day. It was absolute carnage in the tent with everyone rigging their smallest gear. I was in the first heat so it was a mad rush to get my 4.0 ready, when I was sailing upwind it was possibly some of the hardest conditions I've ever sailed with the horizontal rain coming down so hard I couldn't even see let alone look upwind.


I kept to my normal plan for competition sailing and kept it consistent and didnt go for my biggest moves until I already had the set number of moves landed. My port tack moves were mainly Air Flakas, Ponch's, Shakas which the conditions were perfect for. And on Starboard tack I quickly discovered that by Burners weren't consistent enough in this much chop so I stuck with Punetas, E-sliders, Switch flakas and funnels. This got me through two heats in the single elimination beating Chris Kalk and Mattia Pedrani before getting defeated by Taty Frans!

Double elimination- The last morning of the event was definitely the most challenging, not just because we had to be on the water a 6-am. It was bloody freezing!! After sailing my heat against Rossmeir I had the worst fire hands I've ever experienced and when they told my I had won the heat I couldn't even bring myself to smile at the thought of getting back out on the water. Luckily the pain died off and I was next up against the Brazilian Edvan de Souza, whilst I was out waiting for the green flag I couldn't see him anywhere and it wasn't until 1 minute into the heat that he made an appearance. The pressure was on as I knew I had an advantage after landing 2 moves before he was there and I went on to sail my best heat of the contest scoring 23 points out of 30 on one judges score sheet. Next was Tonky Frans who finished in 5th overall last year and he has been sailing amazingly so never feel too bad loosing against him! So I finished the event in 9th, which is my best result so far, hopefully I can keep it up for the rest of the year. This leaves me in 13th position currently in the overall PWA freestyle rankings
Thanks to Jay Haysey from Globalshots for the pictures!