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Last week UK’s two time olympic medalist Nick Dempsy took on three other types of water craft, an Open 60, a Moth and a kiteboarder.
A week of hard racing wrapped up on July 7th at the Crocodiles de L’Elorn Club in Brest. Near 300 competitors had gathered up here hoping to bring the European title home.
Nick Dempsey becomes the first man to win two World Titles in Olympic class windsurfing.
On the Womens side Lee El-Korsiz won the title in advance, and Patricia Freitas won the medal race today.
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The 2013 Miami Rolex OCR (olympic Class Regatta) wrapped up on February 2nd. Israel’s Maayan Davidovich(W) and Spain’s Ivan Pastor(M) saved their best for last in the Women’s and Men’s RS:X events. Davidovich had one win prior to the finals and Pastor had none. They each won their dramatic, winner take all final race to capture gold.
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After a long six month battle, Windsurfing has made it back as an Olympic Event for the 2016 Olympics.
The ISAF Annual General Meeting, in a simple majority vote, decided to delete Kiteboarding and re-instate Windsurfing, which has been in the Olympics since 1984 as a Mens Event, and since 1992 for Women.
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WEYMOUTH, England – If this truly was the end of windsurfing in the Olympics, it was definitely memorable.
Dorian Van Rijsselberge of the Netherlands exuberantly validated the men’s gold medal he had clinched days earlier, and Marina Alabau of Spain skimmed across the waves to win the women’s regatta Tuesday.
Windsurfing was removed from the lineup for the 2016 Rio Olympics in a vote in May, replaced by kiteboarding. The International RS:X Class Association filed a legal challenge last week against the International Sailing Federation. So to do your bit head over to change.org and sign the petition, it takes two minutes and could secure the Olympic dreams for many across the world.
Alabau got a regal send-off from her fellow Spanish sailors after coming ashore. As she stood on her board, they hoisted it on their shoulders and paraded her through the boat park. She held a bottle of Spanish sparkling wine in her left hand and waved the Spanish flag with her right. “It was the best of the week, for sure,” she said.
“Yeah, I think this was a mistake,” she said about windsurfing getting blown out of the games. “I think it will come back. This is my hope and this is what I think will be the right thing. I know how to kite and I will kite if they don’t give me another chance, but I love windsurfing.”
Van Rijsselberge agreed. “Of course it’s a sad thing,” he said. “Look at all the people here. Everyone is enjoying themselves. They come off the water with smiles on their faces.”
His gold medal already guaranteed, all Van Rijsselberge had to do was stay on his board and finish the final race.
He did much more than that, winning the medals race to clinch his gold in style.
After winning the race, the 6-foot-3 Van Rijsselberge climbed on top of the console on his coach’s boat and, hanging onto the pole that supports the weather vane, flashed the “hang loose” sign with his right hand. A large Dutch flag flew from the boat.
The Dutchman, who shaved his head just before the games began, said he wanted to do well in the final race.
“It was already in the pocket, but finishing it up like this and seeing everyone on the Nothe Course and them outroaring the British a little bit was a good thing for me, so why not?” he said. “I want to have a good feeling and I want to wrap it up nicely. It’s the medals race and you’ve got to race it. It’s the most important race, pretty much.”
Van Rijsselberge won six of the first nine races. His lead was so big that he sat out the 10th race.
Nick Dempsey of Britain took the silver and Poland’s Przemyslaw Miarczynski got the bronze.
With the race close to shore, Dempsey hopped off his board and greeted friends and family watching from Nothe Fort.
Alabau came into the medals race with a 14-point lead and preserved it by finishing first.
Tuuli Petaja of Finland jumped from third place overall to take the silver medal, thanks to a fourth-place finish in the medals race. Poland’s Zofia Noceti-Klepacka jumped from fifth overall to take the bronze.
Windsurfing at the least still has at least 1 Olympics left, and the RS:X men and women are in ful swing competing at the the Skandia Sail for Gold regatta. This is there last event before the Olympics, and taking place in the Olympic Venue at Weymouth & Portland National Sailing Academy.
First the video above is the highlights from Day 3. Including interviews with Bryony Shaw RS:X Women – GBR, Alessandra Sensini RS:X Women – ITA, JP Tobin RS:X Mens – NZL, Nick Dempsey RS:X- GBR
After further study of ISAG regulations and submissions regarding the decision by council determining windsurfing and kiteboarding, I have conclusions and recommended actions for ISAF. I’ll first state that I believe kiting has a very good future in the Olympics and this shouldn’t be intended to take away any of the great qualities of Kiteboarding. Herein lies in what I believe was an error in ISAF to correctly situate both windsurfing and kiting in the new regulations that it had just adopted.
A compilation of the medal races at the 2012 Delta Lloyd Regatta of the RS:X Men class.
5 may 2012: ISAF has decided to replace Windsurf by Kitesurf at the Olympic Games.
This decision is not understandable!
Grouped in the Defi Wind, the big international community of Windsurf want to tell this message.
Sign the petition: change.org/petitions/isaf-keep-windsurfing-as-olympic-discipline
Life is sweet for all the competitors and organizers here in Mondello. But the week of sun, fun water and beach sports came to the end. Enjoy the final video from the 2012 World Festival on the Beach.
World festival on the beach Day 1 – Video
World festival on the beach Day 2 – Video
Saturday on the beach in Mondello is something that is hard to write about, dificult to capture in photo or video. You have to be here to see, feel and understand. Here is just a little attempt to capture the best moments of another World festival on the beach day.
World festival on the beach Day 1 – Video
World festival on the beach Day 2 – Video
World festival on the beach Day 3 – Video
Life is full of challenges. And it has not been any different today. Thanks to hard work of organizers beach got bigger this morning, as well as the swell overnight. Side shore winds coming down from the big mountain were gusting from 5-30knots so it is hard to imagine more challenging conditions for racing and especially team racing as today. Hard for the Olympians and even harder for the kids on techno.
The first day of World festival on the the beach and we know already there is gonna be twice as much fun in 2012. Festival now has 2 seprate events. One starting today and one in October. Team racing started today with gusty and shifty winds.
Former Olympian and millionaire businessman Neil Pryde has warned sailing is in danger of being kicked out of the Olympics as the fallout continues from the controversial decision to dump windsurfing in favour of kiteboarding for the 2016 Games.
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