PWA Sylt and the end to a disappointing season on the world tour

Considering that there’s been no updates on here to do with the PWA Freestyle world tour is a little bit of a giveaway for how its been going for me this year. I’ve never been very good at writing about events when they haven’t gone my way. This year the tour finished off in Sylt with the what would be the second event of the year for the freestylers that ended without contestable conditions. Leaving me in 29th place overall…  Going into the year my aim was to hold out my position in the top 16 that I’d held on to for the past three years and start edging closer into that elusive top 10. Unfortunately I think now looking back I wasn’t nearly focused enough with my sailing in the winter time to really back this challenge up. I spent a lot of time sailing in the waves over the winter and I definitely let this take over a bit at times, this could of worked out well but I think I was using a lot of my energy to push myself in the waves but then really taking my foot off the gas with the freestyle. With the progressing level on tour at the moment its just not possible to keep winning heats if you don’t improve over the winter, its that classic scenario of younger guys coming on tour and really pushing hard. I feel like I’ve had some bad luck to go along with this but it would be too easy to focus on that. I’ve also had some great heats in Fuerteventura in the second elimination where I felt like I was sailing the best I ever had there but still overall it just wasn’t enough. I’m just trying to learn from this season as much as I can and now take that into the winter with me and start really focusing myself a bit more to try and get my level up to where I’d like it to be.

Fortunately the Jet ski’s were on hand in Sylt to make sure we at least had some action, the tow in has been non stop given the lack of wind. Actually the last six weeks have been a disaster for me in terms of wind, I was sitting there in Sylt and realised that actually the only windsurfing I’d done since I left Greece at the end of August has involved being propelled by a jet ski or boat.. Its nice that we have this option at events but really now praying the wind picks up a bit for my last few weeks in Europe this year. The Tow-in of course has been hot discussion at the events between the competitors, personally I really feel that its a great show and still could be a great show if they didn’t have such a flat format for the competition that results in serious amounts of repetition and waiting around in between runs, going to be interesting to see how this progresses in the future. Anyway its not quite all over yet, currently in Brouwersdam, Holland for my last European freestyle pro tour event of the year; forecast doesn’t look too promising but we could still compete. Also the British championships are still to come at the end of the month in Weymouth. Massive Thank you to my sponsors for their continual support, Fanatic, North Sails, ION, Cat Phones, Sungod and Club Vass.