WOMEN WAVE
Huge congratulations to Sarah-Quita Offringa for claiming her 4th victory at PWA Sylt.
Day 1 of the contest ended up being the only day with conditions suitable for wave competition and Sarah-Quita battled with the changeable conditions, using almost her entire quiver of sails throughout the day. The semi-final proved to be a nail-biting affair as she needed a final wave score in the dying seconds of the heat to advance against up and coming Sol Degrieck but Sarah-Quita kept her cool and sealed the deal with her final wave score, securing her place in the final where she solidified her event victory.
This second 5 star event win of the year will see Sarah-Quita rocket up the joint PWA / IWT rankings into 3rd place and put her in solid contention for the 2024 Wave World Title. Having been crowned Freestyle and Slalom X World Champion already in 2024, we are sure that Sarah-Quita would like to put the icing on the cake in Hawaii and we can’t wait to watch her perform!
WOMEN FOIL SLALOM
Our young foil superstar Bobbi-Lynn De Jong had a fantastic event in Sylt, securing her highest ever placement at a World Cup event in 4th place. The foil racing was held in anywhere from the lightest of winds to howling offshore gales, and Bobbi-Lynn was consistent throughout the event to secure her 4th place result. Congratulations Bobbi-Lynn on your performance, we are so proud to see you go from strength to strength at every event!
MEN FREESTYLE
Unfortunately the conditions didn’t play ball for the freestylers this year in Sylt. Despite many attempts to run the single elimination in very borderline conditions, it was not possible to complete the bracket, so the world title race remained unchanged. Congratulations to Yentel Caers for an excellent 3rd place result in 2023. You continue to amaze and inspire us with your competition excellence alongside your dedication, motivation and enthusiasm for the sport in all conditions!
Yentel also managed to place 2nd in the tow-in freestyle exhibition and wowed the crowds with some motor-propelled power moves. Congratulations also for this achievement.
Sam Esteve finished the year in an excellent 5th place after an amazing performance in Fuerteventura, his equal best result ever. Congratulations Sam!
MEN WAVE
The men’s competition also took place entirely on Day 1 of the competition window. The morning started off with quite strong winds, with the competitors using 4.0 and 4.2. The conditions dropped quite quickly though, so during the 2nd round everyone was reaching for their 4.7s and 5.0s and by the quarter finals, it was 5.3 weather.
Despite many cancelled heats, the event crew were able to steer the fleet to a final result and both Marino Gil Gherardi and Robby Swift made it to the quarter finals. Unfortunately their runs stopped there though as Robby was taken out by Marcilio Browne and Marino lost narrowly to Victor Fernandez. Robby and Marino finished 5th=. Morgan had an excellent heat in his 2nd round matchup but ended up losing out to Miguel Chapuis in a very tightly contested battle and with no wind to run the double, he had to setlle with 9th=.
Going into the final event of the year in Hawaii, Marino still sits solidly in 3rd place with a shot at the 2024 Wave World Title. Morgan is in 6th place and Robby is in 7th. All the sailors will be looking forward to the warm waters and, quite possibly, giant waves of Hawaii to put on a final show for the end of the Unified PWA/IWT World Tour.
MEN FOIL SLALOM
The foil racers were the sailors who ended up completing the most days of competition in Sylt, as is often the case, and our team performed exceptionally well. Bruno Martini started the event with an amazing first day, finishing 2nd, 1st and 2nd in the first 3 rounds. A couple of mis-haps during the rest of the week saw him drop a few places but a solid final round allowed him to end the event in 3rd place, his best result yet in a Foil PWA World Cup.
Enrico Marotti started the event quite differently with a disastrous 1st round exit in the first elimination, not quite making the final in the 2nd and a crash in the winners final in the 3rd round but he put it all behind him after that and continued the event by making every subsequent final and ended up taking victory in the final elimination which was run on day 10 of this prestigious World Cup. Enrico ended up in 6th which was probably not quite what he had hoped for but he proved his resilience throughout the event and left himself in 3rd place in the overall for the year with 1 event to go in Japan.
Maciek Rutkowski also suffered a less than ideal start to the event but then also made every winners final after the first day, proving he is a force to be reckoned with. He closely followed Enrico in 7th place at the event and will head to Japan in 6th.
Nico Prien improved on his result from Fuerte, stepping into the top 10 for the first time this year on the foil and will head to Japan in 9th place.
Overall, Sylt provided, once again, an amazingly entertaining location to showcase our sport in all disciplines, and the event organizers put on the biggest show of the year in terms of professional events. The coverage was excellent and if you missed out on watching the action live, we would encourage you to head on over to www.pwaworldtour.com to catch up on an excellent 10 days of windsurfing action.
Congratulations to our team and we will wait excitedly to watch the final Wave and Slalom events in Maui an Japan!
