Windsurfing, Kiteboarding, SUP & Foiling
Windsurfing, Kiteboarding, SUP & Foiling
Report from the Big Air Competition, with a strapless hangtime record! The Big Air competition is supposed to be the secondary discipline for the GKA Kite-Surf World Tour if there’s time to run a show once the main event has been completed. Today at Sotavento was anything but secondary to anything. The action was mental! The Big Air contest riders ended up playing catch the sky hook this afternoon at GKA Kite-Surf World Tour Fuerteventura with some very unusual upper level winds that saw some competitors not just getting extra lift once or twice… Airton in fact registered one incredible slice of hang-time at 20 seconds by repeatedly heli-looping his kite overhead! He just kept going… and going! Hooked and holding on! Airton disappears… When he eventually landed out of the competition zone all the riders, crew and crowd were on their feet, head in hands, speechless at what they’d just seen in this quarter final. Airton pulled himself up, looked back the beach (which was now a long way upwind of him) and we could see him waving back at the crowd wondering himself quite what had just happened? His head was surely still spinning because that was the …
Popular Danish rider wins one of the most closely-contested extreme big-air battles yet. Jacobsen (DEN) outgunned Aaron Hadlow (GBR) and Ruben Lenten (NED) in front of a big crowd at Big Bay to be crowned Red Bull King of the Air for the first time. “This feels amazing!” commented a visibly elated Jacobsen shortly after the prize giving. “This is actually my first international win. I really can’t believe I just won Red Bull King of the Air.” The final provided a fitting climax to a day of close-fought battles where every heat produced highlights and upsets. Local favourite and 2016 finalist Andries Fourie was eliminated in round three, while the likes of Reno Romeo and Jerrie van de Kop went down in round four. This year featured a new ‘compact’ format with 18 riders in total – the top 12 ranked from the previous edition along with best four video contest entrants, as well as two wildcards. To the backdrop of a golden Cape sunset, some 8000 people watched as Jacobsen – who had been consistent since round one – put on the performance of the day to peak in the final. “Riding in the final between these two …
The world’s best kiteboarders take to the skies above Big Bay in Cape Town, South Africa, to battle it out for the Red Bull King of the Air title. Eighteen athletes try to outdo one another by pulling out their highest jumps and most insane tricks. Aaron Hadlow has been champion for the past 2 events…could this year be a threepeat for the kiteboarding phenom?
Lack of wind sees round one get underway, but postponed after just a few minutes. Round one of Red Bull King of the Air got underway at Big Bay on Tuesday, 31 January. The first heat of the non-elimination round started at 19:30 when the Southeasterly eventually showed its true colours and gusted to over 25-knots – conditions needed in which to run an extreme big-air contest such as Red Bull King of the Air. Oswald Smith, Gijs Wassenaar and Lewis Crathern played guinea pigs of sorts as they tested the conditions into the Cape Town sunset. The riders managed to make the most of the conditions and dropped a few medium-sized moves over the ramps on offer by the one-metre swell. Some five minutes into the heat however the organisers made the call to nullify the result and call-off the heat as the conditions did not provide enough opportunity in which to perform. “Conditions simply weren’t as epic as we had hoped for on the day,” commented Sportive Director, Sergio Cantagalli afterward. “It’s a big air contest, not a freestyle event, and the wind as it was today just did’t offer the riders the opportunity to put on a …
GKA – MAURITIUS STRAPLESS KITESURFING PRO 2016, DAY SIX – MEN’S STRAPLESS BIG AIR CONTEST! Saturday saw the promise of a carnivalesque performance from the strapless freestylers as they put on a show right in front of the spectators, really up close and personal at the offshore point of the public Kite Beach in Le Morne. As riders sped in towards the spectators they’d pull the trigger on their tricks just feet away from the beach, firing themselves away from the crowd, downwind into the lagoon. The beauty of this discipline, but more so thanks to this talented and fun-loving pack of riders who feed off each other’s enthusiasm, is that the crowds can’t help but be absorbed by the action. 17 riders were split into three heats of four and one heat of five, with riders going off like fireworks in an attempt to claim the biggest score in a ‘big air’ category that was judged 70% on height and 30% on high performance / difficulty. Ralph Boelen from France Tour riders Jan Marcos Riveras, Tundra Max and Carl Ferreira kept the beach party well tuned with info on the mic. On the water, this discipline is so technically …
