Belgium Wave Championships

 Hello everybody

I’m 2 weeks at home again and I have to say I did quite a lot of sailing as it has been pretty windy at home! The main thing in the past 2 weeks was probably the Belgium Wave Championships , first possible weekend we could run the competition conditions looked perfect on the forecast for a competition on real Belgian grounds, Bredene! Instead of standing a whole weekend long on a Freestyle board I was now concentrating on getting my wave sailing up again as I didn’t sail too much in the waves this winter, but felt still really comfortable and I think I was never so consistent in my Takas as this weekend.

 On Friday we did the single of the competition, which first looked like an amazing day turned out to be not the best conditions. Waves where not too high with max 1m and the wind was lighter than I thought it would be, still 4.4 full power but let’s say it’s not what we all hoped for! After making it through the semi final against Fabrice de Vos (4x Belgian Wave champion) with my best heat of the event probably I was up against Jonas Handekyn the last Belgian Wave Champion. Me and Jonas are one of the only ones who land Takas and backside 360 consistently enough to do them in the heat so I knew it was going to be a close heat. On jumps we’re pretty equally also but luckily for me I can jump back loops on smaller waves and could make the difference here especially as the wind just dropped before the heat to 4.8 weather! So super stoked after winning the single it was time to defend my first place in the double the next day.

Again it weren’t the conditions we hoped for but guess that’s how competition always goes, pretty similar to the day before the wind decided to drop just for the finals making us extend the heats by 3 min to give us more time to find our 2 jumps. On wave riding it wasn’t to bad actually I found in this heat, the wind turned a bit offshore = super gusty because of all the buildings at the Belgian coastline but instead we got a bit cleaner waves with more than 1 or 2 turns possible sometimes. I did 2 good wave rides with one a taka inside and another one where I did 4 turns with the smallest aerial of my life. On the jumps I did my cleanest forward with wind from the left in my life I think, and finally could land a backloop OH in the contest as during the last 3 min the wind picked up big time to get me pretty powered up on my 4.8 . In the end I won the heat and can call myself Belgian Wave Champion for now as in Autumn there is still a chance to run another competition if the conditions are good, hope I will be in the country than to defend my first place.. But anyway super stoked I was able to win my first Wave contest ever!

Next update will be about some session at home or maybe even about the EFPT in Russia which starts Monday!

Cheers Dieter