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Women’s elimination ladder. Men’s elimination ladder.
Wipe out of the day!
The final report from the end of racing from Sean O’Brien:
The final day of racing here in Alacati. One last chance to mix the places up as only one slalom elimination was planned for today. That was unless you were Antoine Albeau or Ben Van Der Steen, who had already stitched up 1st and 2nd place respectively without even needing to sail their heats this morning.
A later skippers meeting, 11am this time, as the forecast was for relatively sketchy for the morning and that proved to be the case as when it gets light here, the wind is VERY shifty and unstable, making you think you want to rig 9.5m but actually you could be ok on 7.0m!
Ben Van Der Steen was the first casualty when racing began, sailing underneath the startline fighting for the pin and realising he was going to be over-early. Next was Micah Buzianis, Taty Frans then Pieter Bijl all over-early in the next heat and sent back to the beach. The quarters and semi finals were relatively ‘usual business’ until the winner’s final came along and being ‘OCS’ was the name of the game once again. Ross Williams, Julien Quentel and Peter Volwater all hit the line early and left only five sailors in the winner’s final, including event leader Antoine Albeau and tour leader Bjorn Dunkerbeck.
This time it was the man-in-black, Josh Angulo’s time to shine. Josh led out of the starting blocks, dominating to the first gybe mark and never looking back; taking the last final of the event ahead of Dunkerbeck and Cedric Bordes in 3rd. Albeau finished 4th but he didn’t even need to sail this final to win the event, with 6 wins from 9 starts he was nearly 10 points clear of Ben Van Der Steen in 2nd overall.
With that race, the 2012 Pegasus Airlines PWA World Cup in Alacati, Turkey, drew to a close. Another amazing event – this time with plenty more wind than is usually expected here in Turkey, with a lot of races done on the small boards and even on 6.3m!! This win for Albeau, his first event win of the year after a less than exciting start on his new board sponsor RRD, has completely opened the door for the overall slalom World Title, as he is now only 33 points behind 2011 World Champion Bjorn Dunkerbeck; and 33 points is a VERY small margin when you consider you get 2,100 points for winning an event!
From the rumours floating around, it looks like the proposed slalom World Cup in Vietnam at the end of the year may be cancelled, which leaves the final event of the year in Sylt, Germany to decide who will be 2012 Slalom World Champion. Everything is up for grabs; and Sylt is one of those places you can never be sure what the conditions will be. 4 knots and warm sunshine all week like we had last year, or 30 knots offshore and 9 degree air-temps like we had the year before – who knows! All I know is, it’s going to be fun watching what happens up the front.
Tuning out from Turkey now. A bunch of us are hanging around in Alacati for a few more days, testing next year’s boards and taking part in the Redbull Downwind Dash-For-Cash tomorrow against the best of Turkey’s kitesurfers; should be fun!
Check out Sean’s previous reports below…
