Fuerteventura PWA Super-X Exhibition Day 2

Wednesday July 23, 2003

Two rounds of the exhausting Super-X radical windsurfing discipline were
completed today in the nuclear winds at Sotavento.

Antoine Albeau (AHD / Neil Pryde) scored a first and a second place today
just maintaining his lead for the overall championships, despite the
course being changed to be even more freestyle orientated. The big
Frenchman is excelling in these strong winds and choppy seas, muscling his
way around spocks and loops yet still holding the racing line and the
biggest sails.

Today competitors had to land a forward loop, two spocks, a grubby, three
jumps over obstacles and three duck gybes, all in the two minute races!
Greg Allaway (JP / Neil Pryde) from Australia said, Three rounds a day is
too bloody much mate! I got home last night and couldnt move!Even the
current leader Antoine was saying Super-X is amazingly physical and all
the sailors coming ashore were clearly out of breath and knackered!

The amazing acceleration of Kauli Seadi (AHD / Naish), not to mention his
sprinting down the beach during the running starts, enabled him to have
enormous leads by the first mark, sometimes 100m ahead of the pack after
only 300m of racing! His planing forward loops made him almost untouchable
today and despite wiping out on a few of the spocks he still managed to
score first and third. This leaves him in second overall with a fighting
chance of taking the championships tomorrow if he beats Antoine again. In
classic Kauli style, rather than simply jumping over one of the obstacles
today, he spocked over it and seems to have become the crowds favorite.

Ricardo Campello (JP / Neil Pryde) was also landing planing forward loops
keeping his speed up during the reaches, but like every competitor here,
he was wiping out elsewhere in this incredibly tricky discipline. After
five rounds hes now moved up into fourth place behind team mate Julian
Taboulet (JP / Neil Pryde), who combines incredible speed and heaps of
muscle into his maneuvers and pumping to accelerate into third overall now
with a consistent set of results, which will probably see him on the
podium tomorrow night.

Douglas Diaz (Fanatic / North), Greg Allaway (JP / Neil Pryde) and John
Skye (F2 / Arrows) all dropped down the rankings today as none of them
made the finals, allowing Spains Victor Lopez (Fanatic) move up into sixth
place but with young Douglas still hanging onto fifth.

By the next event everyone is going to have better equipment. The wave
sails were on are too soft, whereas Antoines Super-X sails are fully tuned
for racing and have much better acceleration off the beachJohn Hibbard
(Starboard) said.

So the two sailors really excelling in Super-X right now are Antoine and
Kauli, although Julian and Ricardo stepped up their pace today and are
likely to do more damage tomorrow. The standard of the whole fleet has
improved dramatically in such a short time, with many of the young
freestylers beginning to find the racing line and everyone ecstatic about
this incredibly high action challenge.