This is my fifth time coming to the junior cup in France, but the first time with a group from the school comp team, 8 student in total made the journey to France along with head coach Blaine and several parents, we had just a short flight to Barcelona and somehow managed to pack all the board bags and luggage into the cars and drive up across the boarder, the comp was starting right away the next morning with skippers called for 9 am and strong winds in the forecast we got to our accommodation sorted out our gear and tried to get some sleep.
This year the comp had U14, U16, U19 and U21 mens categories and U16 and U19 girls, our student representations from WCKA were all in U19 except Vetea who had to go into U21. This year myself, Tom and Robin were some of the youngest in our category and out category was also the largest group, with over 20 competitors including Valentine Rodrigues and Maxime Chabloz who are both up in the top 5 of the world rankings.
My results from last year meant that I could skip the first round, which I was quite happy about since the wind was howling and temperatures were pretty cold, we pumped up kites but really the only option was to take a 7m. The small kites made it a bit challenging for everyone, even more so as throughout the school year light wind and big kites have been the usual, my 7m was fresh out of the bag and thinking about it it had been well over a year since I had ridden anything smaller than a 9m.
All of the school competitors passed through their first heats and in to round 2, Tom made it through into round 3 but then had to face Maxime, he put on a solid heat but it was not quite enough. I skipped round one but had to face Oscar in round two, it was not the bet hear of my life but managed to land some tricks and throw in a couple of loops and pass through one more, I also made it through the next heat and into the semis where I came up against Valentine who took the heat so I went through to the second final against my friend Jonas Oahmid, by the time our heat was on the wind was incredibly strong and we were both having a hard time with our small kites, it was close but I took the win, finishing in third place overall after the single eliminations.
The following day it was more of the same with the start of the double eliminations, WCKA team put on a good show again and managed to gain some place sin the Ranking, Tom again rode some great heats, Vetea had some great tricks as well as an epic crash when he broke his bar mid trick. In the doubles Jonas put a stop to the riders who had come up the ladder so we had to face each other again, this time Jonas took the heat just edging me into 4th place.
Overall the school came home with some notable results in the freestyle, with Vetea taking second, and Jenna and Anna taking 4th.
Most of us decided to try out hand at racing too and signed in the the border cross, border cross sees you racing in heats of 4 the race course includes obstacles that have to be jumped, with he strong wind there was no problem to clear the obstacles, myself Tom and Robin were in the same category, both Tom and myself took the win in our respective heats, sending us to the same heat in the semis, Robin worked his way through the dingle after an over enthusiastic start lost him points in heat one, placing him in the same heat with myself and Tom, it was going to be a WCKA showdown. While we were waiting for the other categories to finish to switch back to us we had a little loop session, and me and Tom managed to create a nice tangle, with out heat set to start we had to abandon our spaghetti on the beach and borrow kites from our team mates, we were ready to go but then the competitions was halted for the day.
On the last day of comp the weather had completely changed, leaving us with a day of waiting for wind which never arrived and the final prize giving.
After the closing ceremony, podium pics, thankyou’s and goodbyes the wind kicked in and we headed for a session at Gruissan, it is a bit of an offload trek but an epic spot with strong but clean wind, many of the world tour pros were on the water which is always super motivating.
An early start the next day and we were all back in Sardinina by the early afternoon.
Hopefully next year we will be able to have a great school representation for this comp and some more podiums also.
