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Vice World Champion PWA Fuerteventura 2016

FV16_ls_Women_s_Overall_winnersAfter 5 competition days on the windy island of Fuerteventura we’ve completed a double and second single elimination for the girls! During the first three days of the event the wind was firing, everybody was overpowered on their smallest kit. I’ve mostly used my 3,6 and 4,0 Freek’s together with my Flare 93. The days after there was Calima, which resulted in a lot less wind, we’ve tried a few times to start the second double but the conditions were not suitable.

Going into the event I felt really confident and ready, however dealing with the pressure seemed an issue for me on the first day. In my first heat I crashed my first two moves, that’s when I started to stress out and things went wrong.

A heat is 8 min long and you’re allowed to do 6 moves per tack, of which only 3 count. This means that crashing a move doesn’t matter at all and besides there’s time enough to do moves, so it’s important to keep breathing and stay relaxed. This of course is easier said than done. For me it works best to stay on the beach until the countdown of my heat, if I go out to test the conditions and for example crash 3 moves I loose confidence and am more likely to feel stressed. Whenever it does happen that you start to feel stressed, you should try and forget about the whole heat, take a few deep breaths and start a new heat in your heat with the remaining time, whether it’s 7 min or 2 min that’s left doesn’t matter since you will always improve on your sailing when you feel more comfortable.

As my last PWA competition was a year ago it makes competition sailing harder, you have to learn those tricks over and over again. As I couldn’t get it together in the heat I lost and was on a shared 5th place for the first single. I was pretty upset for a while, but since the double counts over the single I got my head back in the game and found motivation to fight back in the double. I went out for a sunset session as things couldn’t really get much worse than it was, it turned out to be a really good move since I had my best session since arriving in Fuerte. I woke up fulfilled from the evening session and full of confidence for the day to come. I had an awesome heat and got into a flow. I sailed 6 heats in total to work my way up the ranking. The heat against Oda for 2nd place was extremely close and won the heat in the last second by doing a loop. The heat after I was up against the queen Sarah-Quita, it’s really awesome and super motivating sailing against her! I tried my very best but unfortunately it was not enough yet. I was super stoked with my second place in the double, especially after the bad start of the event.

As it was still early and very windy, the second single elimination was started. I worked my way up to the semi-finals, there I was up against Oda again for a place in the winners or losers final. It again was a very close heat again, I had a planing kono coming in which made the difference in the end and qualified for the winners final. In the winners final I was up against Sarah again, I knew I had to up my game to have a chance against her. At this time the wind dropped a little, which is definitely in my favour. I was having quite a good heat, and hearing I was leading 7 min into the heat got me really stoked. Sarah than showed why she is the queen and landed some sick moves in the last 2 min of the heats. She won, but the difference was less than before!

For next year I want to learn a few new moves or get some power moves that I can already do more consistent, like the culo, ponch, shove-it spock, burner and toad. If I could land those moves in a heat I’m quite sure I would have a good chance against Sarah. To achieve this I’m planning to sail in more kind of conditions, this helps to get moves really consistent. Also I want to get more time on the water in general as I haven’t been able to spent a lot of time in the water the past year. Right now I’m super stoked about the result, but I’m even more motivated to train fullpower and try to win next year!!

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