Lamezia a great warm up for Hunstanton?

9TH EUROPEAN KITESURF TOUR – ITALY (LAMEZIA)

The setup for this event has been amazing, I think it was nice to come straight from Germany to the warmth of Italy and to be able to wear board shorts on the beach everyday!

The only thing that was a bit annoying was that the wind was good for about 1 hour each day so we could only get a couple of heats done and what we got was usually enough for a 14m… but i think this spot is perfect for racing!!

Because of my IKA ranking I managed to gain a seeding for the competition again!  This meant I was straight up into the 3rd round!

My first heat was against a French dude called Hugo Guias this guy is insane, we skated together outside of the competition for a couple of sessions and this kid rips! I think the best skater I have ever seen live! anyway, this was quite a close heat, I think I just edged it doing more variety landing the Crow Mobe, I actually thought I lost the heat so it was a relief to have gone through against such a talented rider!

So I progressed through to the 4th round, just like in Germany I came up against North Team mate Stefan Spiesberger who was on fire, he came 4th in the last stop!  this kid is also ripping, its nice to be able to ride with someone who is pushing the sport in the right direction!  He threw down Front Blind Mobe (heal side) and most of the standard regular and switch tricks in all of his heats!  I was quite happy with my heat as the wind was pretty light. I crashed about two tricks and had to run up the beach three times in the heat.  I managed to get about 7 tricks Blind Judge3, Back Mobe switch/reg, Front Blind, Shifty 3, Crow Mobe, Blind Judge switch, not my best heat, this wasn’t enough to put me through.

After the competition finished we (Me and Ned Taylor) decided to go check out one of the local flat water spots, we ended having some epic sessions, the wind was also a bit stronger there because there was  no current.  We got to practice a little for the next comp, the British Nationals at Sunny Hunstanton for the lifestyles event on the 15th/16th July

Keep posted!

cheers,

Luke

www.lukewhiteside.com