George Dufty report EJKC 2014

EJKC 2014 summary with George Dufty

So I’m sat in a MacDonalds in St Pierre la Mer in the South of France in to get some decent WiFi after a quite a disappointing weekend due to couple of factors.

I arrived on the Thursday for registration and the wind was light. A couple of people where out but on big kites so decided to get a good nights rest as it was looking windy for Friday.

Friday riders meeting for the top age category (U19’s) was at 11:30 and I was up on the second heat against James Hayden an Irish rider…

I had a great heat and the wind was blowing strong on my 9m and landed some good tricks.

Next up a heat against Dutch rider, Dylan van der Meij. The wind had dropped a little and was perfect for my 11. I had a great start to the heat and landed some all of my base tricks well which I like to try and bank early on and was onto looking to land “fives”. But unfortunately about 3 minutes from the end my leash snapped and I lost my kite and was quite far out to sea as the wind was offshore. With so little time there was no way I could get back in to the beach so my dad tried to bring my 13m kite to me buy body dragging about 150m trough the box without a wetsuit and handed me my kite unfortunately we could not avoid doing this inside the comp zone so the tricks that I landed once I was back up and riding were not scored with Dylan continuing to rack up points and I lost the heat by 0.5 of a point.

So that was the end of the singles, Dylan went on to finish 2nd.

So ….time to think about the doubles…

Saturday – The doubles kicked off early with a 8 am riders meeting. We were then on standby for nearly 3 hours until the wind came up and had built to a good 20 knots by the time I had my first heat against Manuel Arpa. I had a fantastic heat and was overpowered on my 13 but pulled of all my best tricks and advanced though to the next round. I had another great heat and advanced through with my best heat score yet of the competition.

In the next round I was up against fellow British rider, Olly bridge who had been riding well and powered throughout the competition. The wind was still building and I chose to take my nine which was perfect at the start of my heat and got a good mobe and an S1 then the wind dropped right away and I ended up at the back of the comp box in the chop. By the time the wind picked back up to 30 knots right at the end of the heat, I was fighting through the heavy chop and trying to stay upwind in the comp zone. The heat was for 5th place and I did advance and lost by half a point and a 2-1 decision from the judges…

This left me finishing in 6th place which I am pretty disappointed with as I was not able to do better my result from last year. But this is how competitions go. Unfortunately a few things not going my way and getting unlucky with broken kit. I am super gutted as I was really hoping for a podium this year.

It was good that Olly went on to seal 3^rd in the doubles.

Anyway I am now even more driven to train harder and push my riding for next years event to hopefully get on the podium then and top three and maybe get on that top spot…

But before then, the PKRA in Leucate.

Big thanks go out to my sponsors, Liquid Force Kiteboarding, Hampshire Kitesurfing Centre and Tiki Wetsuits.

George