Wing Foil World Tour (GWA) Show #5 - Recap of Tarifa 2024

Luc Moore (00:00.142)
Well, hello my friend. Thanks for coming back. Nice to see you. Good to see you too. So you're back. I see you're back amongst the books. Yes, back in the office. European office. European office room. Yeah, we're back here from Tarifa from the last Wing Fold World Cup.

And yeah, we have now a bit more of a, I mean, not a long break, but about a month and a half. Well, I say the youth world cup is the next one end of June, which is in six weeks. And then right after we go, we start our Canary Islands leg. Which that'll be super fun. Yeah. Looking forward. We're going to have some bigger action again in Grand Canaria and then.

freestyle and surf freestyle and free -fly slalom in Fort Deventura, but both are definitely reliable high -wind spots and that is what the riders like as well. So I'm sure they have a bit of time to train now, to even improve their level. So yeah, it's a good time. Now we had two events pretty much back to back and even Cape Verde was not such a long break, just a month.

So we had three events in the last, let's say one and a half months, two months. So it's now giving a bit of rest to everybody. And then we're back. Beautiful. How did this one go? Yeah, it turned out, I have to say honestly, coming into the Tarifa event, you know, and we had such a two solid competitions in Cape Verde for the waves firing and then like hard with super strong wind.

The forecast was kind of sketchy, I have to say, coming into Tarifa. It was, you know, we were hoping for Levante. That's the usual wind that can blow strong in Tarifa from the east side. And then you have the Ponyente. So that's the wind that's coming from the west side. And it's usually the one that comes with bad weather. It's cloudy, can't even rain. It's not that strong. And yeah, looking like coming into event a couple of days before, there was only like a good forecast.

Luc Moore (02:23.886)
on the first day with rain as well and cold. And then the other days were kind of maybe, maybe not. But the thing is in Tarifa, if you get this west direction with these poniente winds, normally in the afternoon you have a thermal effect as well. So it even gets stronger than what you see on the forecast. And we were lucky enough to have actually two good days of wind.

So the first day was a very untypical day for Tarifa and as I said we saw the forecast being the only really good day. We really tried to start super early in the morning, we started six in the morning, had registration and then got the girls already going as soon as they were registered and then the men's a bit later.

So we were pushing to get a result on the woman first because we weren't sure how many hours we really going to have on competition time to make sure we get a result. And yeah, and then it turned out, I mean, it was raining in the morning, everybody was wet. It was really untypical conditions for Tarifa. And we, yeah, by midday kind of the rain disappeared and we had solid 20 knots plus, 22, 23 knots.

And the day after we got again a similar situation, a bit lighter wind, but still good wind till the evening, till the sunset hours. So, yeah, Tarifa delivered again. We got actually a really high level freestyle competition going. We also live streamed. I hope a lot of you were following the live stream action. It was, it was...

I mean, Leicat was also a pure freestyle discipline without surfing elements because the water was flat, same like in Tarifa. But in Leicat, I think the extreme conditions of 40 -50 knots didn't allow really to show all the repertoire that these young boys and girls have trained on the past months.

Luc Moore (04:39.374)
So now in terrific, it was showtime, I have to say, you know, when it came to progression of the sport. And it was amazing to see the level of freestyle, the highest level we've seen so far, for sure. We had seven or eight innovation tricks, which means new tricks that have never been landed before being landed in this competition, which is...

a lot like normally you would have one or two maybe in an event. We had seven or eight new tricks never landed before that were stopped in this competition, which just showed and they were not all by the same guy. I know these were different guys and different girls. So, so you could really see how much everybody had trained on secretly putting adding a couple of secret moves to their to their trick bag. And yeah, and this

And this is obviously also something we want to see. Innovation is important. We want to develop the sport. And now, you know, with all the social media and things being filmed all the time, it's very different to keep new tricks secret. Yeah, it's very, very hard. And, you know, and it's very tempting, you know, when these guys train with others that they kind of train on this, but there is some of them, they really like say, well, no.

I got a few new tricks, but I'm not going to show that when I train here with other guys because I don't want them to see them before the heat. You could really see it was now in this event, the trick repertoire went a lot into, let's call it handle passes from kiting or wakeboard or kite surfing inspired tricks.

back mobs, all kind of behind like passing the handle or passing the wing behind your back rotations and combinations. So it was kind of a few guys, Kiders, that we're watching is we're saying, hey, this looks already like a kind of freestyle event. But yeah, you could really see the difference of a couple of riders that were super powerful and performing these technical tricks, but on a very good height, like going big. And that's what the judges want to see.

Luc Moore (06:56.174)
What we want to see, it's not about, we want to see super technical stuff that's two meters high above the water. We want to see them go big, four or five, six meters in the air and then doing this stuff. So this is what brings the big scores. Cause we talked about that last time, right? Like in the 50, 60 knots, we weren't sure whether they had some tricks cause they were just doing more stalled and bigger front flips there, but so they did come out.

Exactly. Yeah. No, but we saw very different tricks to Leucat. That's what that was the interesting thing to see. I really adopted it to the condition. I said it was, Leucat was 40 knots, 50 knots. You don't, you know, it's not easy to do handle passes in these kind of conditions and even rotations, you know, you're looking for different tricks. Now it was a lot more, yeah, as I said, wing passes, it was a lot more.

combos as well, where it was tried to attempt on combos, on different variations, on grabs, on, you know, like trying to really perform tricks with style. You know, this is what I like seeing at the moment in the evolution, even though there are simple rotations with nice grabs. And...

The action in Tarifa just because of the, let's say, setup of the spot, it was much closer to the spectator. So the tricks were closer to the spectators. The weather was more spectator friendly as well. Although I told you it was not really warm, but it's a place obviously in Tarifa when the sun is shining, it's warm. You can have a lot of people on the beach in Valldebarque. And yeah, and we had a nice setup as well. So we basically got the competition done in two days.

the first two days, which was ideal because on the third day we didn't have wind anymore. And the last day, the wind kicked in very late and we were planning on running a super session of best trick to see some new combos that the boys and girls try. But the wind came in like six in the evening, so it was too late to start something. But we were done with the main competition already and had a couple of...

Luc Moore (09:13.326)
say social activities. So it's been a pretty smooth event, I have to say, and very successful again. And yeah, I was really, let's say, impressed by the level that all these young, new kids that come now into the freestyle discipline or surf freestyle discipline are already showing nowadays. And I've been...

I haven't been for a year in Tarifa and when I came to Valdebarcaros to the sport first day, two or three days before the event, I was impressed how many wings were on the water in general, not talking about only the World Cup athletes, but this sport has been growing a lot. It's a kite sport. It used to be a windsurf spot in the 80s, one of the most known in Europe. Then it kind of shifted over more and more into kiting.

And now you can really see wing getting very, very big. You know, so many people on the water, renting gear, having their own gear. It's crazy. It's really, it's really, really good to see hundreds of people on the, on that spot, winging. And, and obviously all the, all the athletes were, were, were training as well. And, we had, a lot of the kids, you know, that I mean, I'm talking about kids, they are 15, 16, 17.

But a lot of them are local, people that are from there, that live there. They might not be Spanish, come from somewhere else, but they live there. And you can really see how this growing up in this wing hotspot with so many talented young people around really pushes the level of each other. And...

I mean, Nia is, I think, the perfect example. I mean, she's dominating the women's side in wing -foiling, more or less, or most of the disciplines at the moment. And she comes out of this community, out of this tarifa, you know, let's say, this tarifa gang, in a way, that are young wing -foilers that grow up there. And there are a lot more now coming on the men's side as well as on the women's side.

Luc Moore (11:31.278)
And you can see, yeah, they are right together every day. For those who are just getting to know this spot, I know it's pretty famous, but what's the setup look like? Is it a big bay? Is it? Yeah, well, it's just there are several spots. So Tarifa is more or less the most southern tip of Spain, mainland Spain. So Tarifa itself sits in the Strait of Gibraltar. It's the closest point to Africa.

So you can see Morocco on the other side. It's only a straight of 12 kilometers, I think, wide that connects the Atlantic Ocean with the Mediterranean Sea. And this narrow part brings obviously this consistent wind. So this Levante situation is when you have high temperatures in the summertime, the wind blows from the Mediterranean through the strait.

to the Atlantic Ocean. I mean, it's the opposite. So that's when it's cooler weather. When it's warmer weather, you have the Levante. And it is partly thermal effect, but it's a weather system, let's say, with a high that even funnels the wind through the strait of Gibraltar and makes it stronger than anywhere else at that spot. So basically along this coastline, which is not only one spot, so you have spots right in the town. You know, Tarifa is a small old town, beautiful.

that used to be really, back in the early windsurfing days, it got discovered by some windsurfers and was always this hippie windsurfing community. And now it has developed in being a hotspot for people, you know, come over from Mabea, from Malaga, from different countries that have actually nothing to do with the water sports. But just because it's a beautiful region with...

amazing food, you know, they have a crazy good food culture tapas. It has full on seven days a week nightlife if you want to, you know, the whole the old town of Tarifa has more than 100 bars, I think they are busy every night. So there's a lot going on and a lot of the European water sports community loves to hang out there. Because you get many, many spots, you get many windy days, maybe not every day, but if you drive a few kilometers.

Luc Moore (13:56.814)
up and down the coast, you can find wind most of the days. So you can ride quite a lot. But it's actually an old town that has now some new town around it. It's not very big and has a lot of countryside in the back. People can do mountain biking, downhill mountain biking is very popular there as well. Water sports, golf, wakeboarding. So it's a lot of active people that live there.

And it's been, yeah, since the 80s, I would say, at Magnate, I think from people from all over Europe, you know, so many people that live in Tarifa that are not Spanish, that are from any other countries, but decided to live there just because it has a really laid -back lifestyle and it's a good quality of living. You know, it's south of Spain, so everything starts a bit late.

There's no supermarket open before nine in the morning. You basically wouldn't catch breakfast probably in any place in any cafeteria or bar before nine or 10. People have lunch at five in the afternoon and have dinner between 10 and midnight and then go for a drink. And if you want to hit the bar, it's basically empty before two o 'clock in the morning. So seriously. Yes.

But that's south of Spain, you know, like shops open in the morning, then closing after lunchtime, like two, three o 'clock, it's yester time. Basically everything's closed between two or three in the afternoon and six. And then at six in the evening, they open again until 10. And between three and six, the whole town is either sleeping or on the water doing their sports. no way. That's awesome. Yeah, that's life in south of Spain. All right. Good to know.

so back to, back to the contest, where did you guys stay this time? Like last time you were kind of glamping, you had said everybody was super close and you had to access tractors to get to the water, to get to the launch spot. Was this time a little easier? Yeah, it was a bit easier. So in Tarifa, the setup is a bit easier. You can basically drive. So we were located at Bibo Beach Club, and Tangana. These are two, this whole bay, you know, that comes from the, from the town down to the dune.

Luc Moore (16:20.622)
It's like 10, 12 kilometers with a lot of different beach bars and spots where people can do water sports. And Tangana and Bibo, these are two quite famous places. That's right in front where the competition took place. You can drive your car, not right on the beach, but behind the beach bar, unload your gear and just walk down to the event side. I mean, we were accommodated. A lot of the crew and the riders were staying in Las Tunas, which is similar to Viglamo where we stayed in Leucard. It's like a glamping luxury camp style.

It's a really awesome place that was just newly built a year ago. They opened where a lot of the units you're sleeping in tents, like luxury tents. So your bedroom is basically under a tent. It's a pretty unique place. I would recommend everybody who gets to Tarifa maybe to check it out. And it's right on the spot so you can walk down to the beach from the campsite.

But in terms of the rest, and we had obviously quite a few people who stayed in town, as I said, Tarifa town, it's maybe 10 minutes by car from the competition side. So people usually in the afternoon, they drive out of town, they come down to the beach to any of these chiringuitos, so these beach bars, that's the chiringuito is the Spanish name for beach bar, and have a beer and you know, have food or go on the water or just chill. So it kind of spreads all over this long, long beach and a different beach bars and then...

As soon as the sun is down, people go move back to town and get to Old Town for dinner and beers. And then the nightlife starts. Starts all over. All right. Any highlights from the men's and women's side that stood out the most for you this time? Well, not a singing one. I would say, as I explained, I think it's been very impressive in general where the level had been taken.

I think, yeah, there were, for sure, you could see that now the development was a lot going into handle passes and that's what most of the people tried to land as their top tricks. But I would say I was pretty impressed by some of these young new athletes.

Luc Moore (18:37.838)
that were competing not for a long time or maybe the first time that shows that there is more and more potential in the next events that some new faces are ending up maybe not winning yet, but ending up highly ranked in some of those events. Yeah, that's really great. Also on the girls side, we had a pretty decent level, quite a lot of girls competing and the...

I would say the whole, what was for me really outstanding in a way is that.

It's on the men's side, especially the level is really dense and it's really hard. Obviously there are a couple of people who have are consistent and they always do well, but there is plenty of people that if they have a good heat and have a good run, they can all end up in the final and you wouldn't count on them. And that keeps the whole side quite exciting. And even on the girls, I mean, Nia is definitely dominating at the moment, but in the semifinals, she was not like having the best heat.

ever, let's say. And she was, until a few tricks to the end, she was actually not in qualifying position to even make it for the final. But yeah, she realised that then and she concentrated and landed a couple of safe tricks and made it the point she needed to put her in the right spot and advance into the final where she won.

But it just showed that, you know, it's not an easy one, even for the top guys, you know, and girls. You need to be on it and you need to be concentrated and focused. And if you don't put your performance on the water, you're out as quick as you can even think. And yeah, a lot of these young boys, especially, they are hungry. You know, they know they have the level. They may be missing the consistency of putting on their top performance on every heat.

Luc Moore (20:37.198)
very outstanding in general, not on the final maybe that much, but on the other heats, for example, it was Xavi, Xavi Kroh, he was putting the highest heats, he had the highest heat scores of the whole competition in the quarters in the same as like landing incredible innovation tricks and you know, ending with 27, 28 points out of 30. So super high scores. Yeah, but he, yeah.

A lot of people had had bad money on him, I think, seeing him how he was performing in the rounds coming towards the final. I was saying this boy can win this event this time. But in the final, yeah, he struggled a bit to get the put the consistency and land all these new tricks that he had already landed in the hits before. So he ended up fourth. Still a good, very good result. But yeah.

I think he was expecting maybe when he saw how he's performing, he was expecting he could even end up better than that, which he could have done. And yeah, and there is a few others that, for example, one of the Acherer brothers, you know, there are two young Austrians that started competing last year and they're doing very well. He missed out on the final.

by so much in Leucoth already and the same happened now. Unfortunately, the same is went out. But yeah, these boys are to watch out for. Very talented brothers that have also a snow sport background, you know, come from winter sports. And they do very, very well on the wing -foil side as well. So...

as well as some of the Tarifa young boys, you know, Neidtemberger, then there's a couple others that come from Tarifa and that don't compete on all the tour, just on some events for now. But I hope we're going to see them back at some of the other events too, because they're going to mix up the rankings quite a bit, I think.

Luc Moore (22:47.726)
It's all about consistency. I talked to Zavi on the show. He came on maybe three weeks ago for a recording and he was saying Chris was just, and Nia were just so consistent and they had practiced their tricks in such a variety of conditions that allowed them to kind of stay on top. Like, would you say that was, that's pretty much the main difference, I guess, because they're all getting their fairly, some of them are fairly clumped together.

Yeah, I mean, when it comes to competition, consistency is the key. It doesn't matter which discipline, you know, it's not, you know, the way our competitions are run, it's not like one heat or one race where you need to perform and be the best and beat against each other. You're always competing in groups. So it's not like a full fleet race, let's say, you know, where you are in the water with a hundred people at the same time. And the first two finishes across the line is the winner. So you're always competing in groups.

And in the end, you need consistency to win a competition. So you need to be good throughout the whole event. You know, you need to, you need to put your comm in freestyle, you need to put your performance in every single heat until the final and also in the final, because that's the one that counts in the end, but you need to get there first. And the same is for slalom for free slice slalom. It's not only one heat, you need to, you know, we need to win multiple races to be the champion in the end. So consistency is definitely the key and the same is for a wave event.

It's not only you can have the best heat of your life, but if it's in the first round, it's not going to make you win the comp. And it's not always that the final has the craziest conditions. Sometimes you might start with the best conditions in round one and then the finals, it gets more tricky and you're struggling because you can't score in a wave competition what you would like to, what you had done maybe the heats before and you need to adapt. So...

Consistency is definitely the key, I think, and that's why you see also the experience of those people who are regularly on top. They know how to ride in a competition, and that's why a lot of the young guns are still missing. They have a crazy trick of bags, and they might be able to pull off some moves that other people can do, but just because being able to do one trick that's higher than anybody else can do, it doesn't mean you win an event with that one trick.

Luc Moore (25:11.054)
And this is the key to win a competition. You need to be a smart competitor. And this is something you learn with time. You need to understand when you need to risk and when you don't need to risk. And that's why life scoring now helped a lot. Basically, the riders are able to go to the... We have a turn -by -turn system in freestyle, so when they perform a trick...

they're able to go to the beach and get the information where they are sitting. They get the information, okay, you are sitting in third position, you need a seven point trick to go in second. This helps to know what you have to do to understand how you're going to build your heat. And the more you make use of that, the easier, let's say, is it to...

be on top of other competitors because you might be crashing the first two, three tricks and you know you need to land now tricks and then if you know that you're still sitting in a comfortable position, you might not need to risk to go for the hardest maneuvers that you might not land. And yeah, and this is, I think,

where you can see those guys who've done multiple events or competing for years or come even from other sports, you know, where they've been competing in windsurfing or in kiting or, you know, where competition formats are similar. This is really helpful. And Chris, I think Chris has the advantage that he's so safe in landing his tricks, you know, he...

Everything he would do in competition, he knows he has, I don't know, a 90 % rate of landing it. So he relies, he knows exactly, I can do this trick and I can land this trick. I don't know exactly, I'm not his coach, but I would say he would probably only try and go for something where he knows he is not totally safe in landing it if he absolutely needs to.

Luc Moore (27:36.974)
If he knows I need to score a 10 or a nine five to advance, I need to risk and otherwise I know I'll perform the tricks that I'll land really, really safe, which is nearly all of them. So it's for him. He has a lot of them really dialed in. but you know what I mean is it's, it's just for him, I think.

He is in this position right now where everybody knows he's in the end, the one who puts the benchmark, no? And I'm not saying of because he's doing the hardest tricks. There might be other other writers in the comp who landed tricks with a higher score than his. But when it comes of building a whole heat, he always like when you have three tricks counting, you know, you get a maximum of 10 points per trick and you have three tricks counting, for example, in the format we were running. That means 30 points is the maximum.

I mean, he would probably be always around 25 points at least. And that's pretty solid, you know. Having, yeah, let's say maybe 23 if he doesn't do it that well, but you know, getting a consistent 23, 25 points out of 30 in nearly every heat, that's pretty decent. So then you would have other com... Yeah.

Yeah, exactly. 8 .5 is an average on each trick and that's a lot. And then you might have other competitors who score a 9 .8 or maybe even a 10. But then on the trick two and three, maybe only a six and a five. So they end up with less points in the end. And when you look at the scoreboard or the score sheets of Chris, yeah.

I think you hardly see the tricks that are scored lower than eight on his counting attempts. So that's pretty solid. Yeah, especially given his age. He's still pretty young. Yeah. Impressive. Impressive. Nice. Did you get to get out in the water a little bit as well this time?

Luc Moore (29:50.03)
No, unfortunately not. Actually, I brought a wetsuit and I even wanted it because I thought that the two, three days I was there before it was windy and I might be able to jump on the board. But unfortunately, no, it's been too busy with preparing the event and it's not been windy all the day. As I said, it's a place where in Tarifa a lot of times the wind kicks in like three in the afternoon. So you get a couple of hours in the afternoon to get on the water. Yeah.

This time not, but it's definitely a fun place to ride. It can have waves too in the wintertime. Most of the time it's rather wind chop. It's a place where now also gets popular with downwind foiling because of that strong winds, being able to do downwinders from Tarifa town all along the beach.

But we didn't have these conditions now and it was more onshore wind and even like cross offshore from the other side. So with this rain we had. It's been good to see though on the competition that even though the conditions were with the rain, partly not easy because as I said, it can get quite gusty when it's that offshore.

It doesn't affect winging as much as it would do kiting or windsurfing. You would still get good gusts in between. You have to wait. But these gusty conditions still are fine to put on a really good show. On average, what was everybody riding this time? You were mentioning four meter wings, any kind of new boards, any new foils kind of came out for this one? I haven't noticed anything like really

suspicious, let's say. Like hockey sticks, like you have to maintain a certain level. I didn't take a look at details, look at every fall that was in the competition, but I didn't see anything really like weird. I mean, for sure, nowadays, for these new tricks that are shown, it's no question you need a wing with a boom, I think.

Luc Moore (32:13.326)
If you rock up at the competition right now with a wing without boom, there is no chance you can follow up with those tricks that are at the moment the ones that score high. So all the wings now have booms. And even though some of the brands might not have a boom in production, then some of the riders, they're building it themselves. So they're attaching a boom to the handles to have a...

a bar that's all the way through it just to be able to grab everywhere. So this I've seen quite a few who do that.

But I think on the wing side, yeah, I think most were between 3 .5 and 4 .5. These were the sizes, you know, mainly used. Maybe 5 meter, the biggest. But as it was a pure freestyle event, everybody wants to use as small wings as possible to be able to rotate. And on the...

Now, boards and foils, I would say for sure in freestyle everybody wants to have something with really low swing weight, so they want short boards. You can see also people using thicker boards because you can go shorter by keeping the same volume. And it's not as much... Yeah.

as critically I would say to be able to feel the foil that direct like in a wave competition where you need to surf. It is an advantage to have a thinner board and be more direct to your foil. This is also an advantage for freestyle of course, always. I think the more direct you can feel your foil. But it has less of an effect in the freestyle. It has...

Luc Moore (34:09.262)
a positive effect to have a really short board for freestyle to be able to do quick spin rotations, vertically and horizontal. So, but I haven't seen, I haven't seen people really writing a lot of custom boards. So I've seen most of, of writers being on production boards. interesting. Okay. All right. And what was, let's say the top trick, male side top trick on the ladies side.

Luc Moore (34:42.989)
Because you guys have these like eight innovation, the new tricks, are they all named or is that still kind of? Yeah, this is a good question actually. Now with all these innovation tricks that the judges are sitting there's like, man, wow, she called this now. This was a toe side back mo five. Okay, gonna name, they have to put some kind of name, you know, in the scoring system, you will always see inno. So where the usually where you see the trick name under the score.

It says Inno for innovation trick so they don't put a name yet to it, but it will be marked. And, yeah, and we're now discussing with the athletes about the names already. I mean, I think it's good to have names that actually describe what the trick is so you understand it's a toe side, backside five, for example. But then also if you have all these names named this way, it gets kind of weird.

differentiate and they're all going to sound the same. So now, now there, there are some of usually it's the the athlete who lands the trick for the first time is the one who should be the one giving a name to it. So some of those are coming up now already with some funny names for tricks that I don't know where they come from, but they are not related to it at all, but it just sound good. So

We'll see, you know, in windsurfing, it's been going this way in freestyle windsurfing. And when all these new tricks came up, they all like got really weird names that some of them you would not even be able to spell. I don't think that's the right way to do it because it's going to go too far away from what it is actually. But I think having some kind of logical name to it that's short and easy rather than a, yeah.

front side, toe side into, especially when it gets to combos, the names get really long. You can have a trick name that's like, like you could never fit this on a one line in a... No, I guess not. Unless you put it, unless this is something that you guys put out to the audience and say, Hey, this was like, had a combination of four moves in it.

Luc Moore (37:10.638)
should be a contest, should be something, I don't know. That could be an interesting proposition. Yeah, yeah, we have now, as I said, we have usually after every event, we have a recap with our committee, with the writers committee and the new innovation tracks that they put into the trick list. So for the next event, they're not innovation anymore. So they only score innovation on the first event they are shown. And then they get categorized, so they get a certain

They get a certain difficulty level, like as a benchmark where they are standing, where all the writers wrote on it. They say, okay, this trick should be a 7 .5 in average. No, it depends on execution, but just talking about difficulty. But for sure, it is, as I said, we are really looking for...

powerful execution meaning amplitude so even though and that's for me also more impressive I really like some of the tricks that are performed with a lot of power a lot of speed on the takeoff going high and even though they might have less rotations but they are done in a stylish way with a grab with a lot of control with a really clean landing right on the foil I think this is what scores the highest.

rather than having an innovation trick that maybe has never been seen before, but it's been landed very sketchy and kind of water starting out of it and not riding out of it with speed. I think that a well -executed move should always be on top of that. Yeah, that makes sense. I guess broken down into the two categories, I guess then. Yeah, that makes sense to me. Yeah. And in the end, we want to see clean moves. You don't want to see...

Riders train the hardest tricks, innovative, but not landing them clean. I think it's also for the show side. If the spectator, especially somebody who doesn't know wing -falling, would say, why does this guy win? He nearly swims out of each trick and the other guy is dry still. And it's true. In the end, the execution is the main key and execution is also landing. It's height, it's speed.

Luc Moore (39:28.75)
And this there you can see the difference because you take a lot more risk. No, I mean, if you, if you, you know, jump, let's say four to five meters out of the water and then pass the wing behind your back, or you do it two meters high is a completely different story. The risk you take. Yep. That's true. That's true. Now, is there somewhere that we can go to see these like repertoire of duly named?

tricks or anything? Yeah, well, the trick names have not been decided yet. So the trick names are coming now for the new for the new tricks. At the moment, they're still having as I said, descriptions like toe side backside five, for example, or toe side, you know, now there was a lot of backmops, but also blind to blind or kind of wrapped, kind of it would be wrapped. So you with your back.

with your back to the wing, grabbing your wing at the back with both hands and then jumping out of this position or doing completely one handed like riding on the takeoff ready one handed, jumping one handed, landing one handed and riding one handed, like all the way one handed out of it, in and out of the trick. So that's super technical and that scores a lot if you're doing that clean. But you can, we have on the GWA WingField World Tour YouTube channel,

at each event, we're bringing out a video with the 10 best maneuvers. So I think it was released a few days ago. So feel free to check out the YouTube channel. We did the 10 best tricks of the event. And there are names to it too. Beautiful. Alright, folks. You heard him. Yeah, we are actually trying to keep a repertoire and maybe at one point being able to really

have like a full archive of all the tricks that been in the competition with the names, but as there's so much happening, it's an endless job. that's a big job. That's a big job. But maybe the progression will slow down at some time and we can catch up. But I think this will still take a few more years. Were there a lot of applicants both on the ladies side, men's side this time that we're trying to get in where the numbers as high as the last event?

Luc Moore (41:51.79)
Yes, yeah, we had also quite high number, a little bit less than in Leucard because in France there is a lot of high level wing foilers that want to enter competition locally, maybe not do the tour, the full tour, but they want to enter and they wanted to compete in Leucard. So we had a few and also we had more disciplines. So Tarifa was only freestyle. We didn't do any slalom.

But for sure, we had again a long waiting list. I would say also Tarifa and Esloy Kat are two of the events where a lot of people want to enter. And it's one of those events that are really popular to get onto. And yeah, we had a few people who could make it in. They were the waiting list too low. They will hopefully have a chance at the next event. I think I explained it in one of the earlier episodes, we have a video application of each event. So...

Basically anybody who feels like he has the level to go in the World Cup can submit videos and we're giving a minimum of four wild cards only for video applications each event per gender. So in the end anybody can qualify and get into if you have some video footage you can be selected and this is usually the way how

the youngsters managed to get into World Cup events over those guys who have already rankings, that are qualified by rankings. And for the women, it's usually easier because we have a maximum of 28 competitors. And on the women's side, most of the events were not full. So it's a bit easier to enter. We had 14 girls, I think, in Tarifa.

So half. Well, which is pretty decent. I mean, for a pure freestyle event, we have on the slalom a bit more on free fly. Because, yeah, I think that's easier for anybody to get in in the end. It's not as technically. I could do it. I wouldn't win, but I could do it. Yeah, you should come. Yeah, I should try one time.

Luc Moore (44:16.558)
sure. We'll give you a wild card if you want to. shit. All right. I should do that one time. That would be fun. Yeah, no, serious. Okay. Yeah, that would be fun. For the Ventura. For the Ventura. Damn. All right. Let me look that up. We'll talk off camera.

man. All right. So how did it go with the organizer? Everything went well? yes. Yeah, everything went well. We were working with a, with a, it might even be known to a lot of guys, is Jaime Heras is a, he's an old legend of, of all the, the wind water sports. He's been into professional windsurfing back in the early nineties. And then when kiting came up, he, he was one of the first.

pro -Kaitas. He still has his pro model at Duotone, the Jaime Pro that's named after him. So it's a very experienced partner with whom we are working and he's very passionate into winging now. He's been one of the first ones in Spain also getting on the wing and we work with him on nearly all the events we do in Tarifa.

and he's together with another partner, another Spanish local. We have done so many events, so the setup is always good. We had a really nice setup for the Judge Tower, a flag setup, we had the Red Bull Athlete Launch that is part of what we've got for all the events. It's been a really, really smooth and nice event, good food.

Good vibes, good competition. We had a good party with all the athletes on the weekend, obviously, to round up things. So, yeah, that's been maybe the only problem is that a lot of the competitors are still too young to have a long night out in Tarifa. So, not everybody was able to join, but yeah, we've been...

Luc Moore (46:36.078)
having also a movie presentation or one of our judges who is running a foil brand and let's say with a sustainability approach to it. So he's building foils that once they get returned by customers because they want to buy another foil, they get refurbished and gets sold again to new customers.

It's a concept, every foyer is handmade and he has been doing a video presentation for the athletes about, not only about the brand, but in general about the approach of sustainability and how people should be aware of that and rethink maybe in...

Wasting materials in general waste issues, traveling emissions, you know, there's a lot to think about. And I think it was great to pass this message to a lot of these young athletes that are now in wing folding that might not have thought about that so much yet, just to have a bit more critical thinking. And I think it's great. Yeah, we have...

We also had the organizer implemented in the event when we were done with competition. And environmental activity where athletes had the possibility to build the bird sanctuary because this whole Tarifa beach is a national nature park with some very rare species of birds.

So we always try and, you know, beside the competition, we were visiting one of the schools, we took a few riders to one of the high schools in Tarifa, to showcase the sport to some young kids that are not into the sport yet and tell them, look, this is maybe something you should try and this is our life as a pro and what it looks like and just inspire them. And, you know, they grow up in such a, you know...

Luc Moore (48:52.27)
potential environment to bring up the next world champion. It's great to involve also people that are not linked to the sport yet in those kind of events to grow the sport and also to just show there is more behind it than just doing tricks on the water. I mean all these athletes and the crew, we all live this...

Our lives are completely adapted to the sports and it's not only about training the latest trick and putting an eight or nine or 10 on the score and during the heat, but we all depend on nature and we all try to live our dream, everybody for himself. And that's what also keeps me driving, running these events and being around people that share this passion.

A lot of these kids when I was 15, 16, I was not wing -falling, it was windsurfing at that time, but I was completely crazy about that. And I wanted to do everything just to be as much on the water as possible. And I can see the same fire now in these young girls and boys, and that's great to support them to be able to reach their dreams at one point. It's a good thing. yeah. It's such a huge thing that TUR is doing for...

for development for kids. It's massive. Like they're like a little like walking around like little rock stars and they get to do all these things and see all these places and get and then bring all that knowledge and wisdom back home. Like that, that's that's so amazing, especially with the advent of socials. And it's interesting to watch through these journeys because then a lot of them are rather going to all the little jobs are going to do afterwards. It's such a it's nice to be a part of that for sure.

No, no, totally. And for me, it's also amazing to see as we run only one event, the Youth World Championship, which is actually the next event we have on tour in the end of June, which will be in La Palma again. So the same spot where we run it last year. And, you know, this is something where we get already contacted by parents and by the kids themselves. Months, a year in advance. They want to know when it is, where it is, they want to, you know,

Luc Moore (51:14.51)
plan everything around it. I don't know yet how many people because the registration is still open, we're going to have this year, but you know, there are different age categories. So you can have 60, 70, 80 or 100 people. And the oldest ones are 18. So they're all between let's say 10 and 18 and compete on the on the Youth World Cup. It is yeah, one of the most important events of the year, you know, not because the world titles.

you know, the pro world titles are being decided there. But this is really something that keeps those kids driving, you know, and even, you know, somebody like Chris, who is still, he's 18 now, so he can still compete this year in the youth. And although he is world champion in the open category, it's still important for him to go to this event and be there, you know, and that's really, really, really great to see, you know, for him.

He wouldn't. Anyway, it's his last year he can go. But he wants to win it one more time, you know, even though he has been world champion already on the on the pro category and is sitting in first position right now the world rankings after two wins. He still wants to go to the youth and want to win it another time. why not? Why not maximize your your entire experience? I'll be an MJ, you know, get six titles out of what eight years or so might as well do it.

But I'm really happy to see all this young blood that is coming into the sport. It's very motivating to see that this sport, these are people who are going to carry on this sport for many, many more years. And that's very, very important to have the long -term vision on wing foiling and see.

There's so much young kids coming into this that are driving and they are thrusting to be on the water and push the sport harder than ever and be better than the others and it's healthy. And we have, for us, that's what I wanted to say before, that like having a platform for the youth is very, very important. That's something we really thought about a lot how to do it. And we had, for example, more events than one in the past. We did even two.

Luc Moore (53:42.702)
But we also saw it's, I mean, most of them go to school. They're not professionals. They cannot travel all the year. So once you do three or four or five youth events, some of them might be able to do that, but the majority of them will not be able to do that. They will not be able to travel to five events a year. And then in the end, you decide a world champion title only between the two, three, four, five that are able to do that because...

They don't go to school or for other reasons. And that was also a request from a lot of the parents, you know, that I said, well, it's already expensive enough. Obviously, if their son or their daughter competes at the youth, they're not traveling there alone. They come with the whole family usually. So they all take a holiday to go to the Youth World Cup. Most of them, we always try to put the dates in the holidays as well. So it's easy for the families to travel. And...

If you would do this five times a year, I think it wouldn't be doable for a lot of them. Yeah, that's true. Yeah, that adds up. Flight tech, accommodation, everything. Yeah. Yeah. You might come with one, two parents, maybe have sisters, brothers, cousins, nephews. Yeah. Everybody has to go. But we will try to probably, obviously offer also different locations and not always do it in the same place because...

For sure, if an event of a youth world championship is in Europe, it's a lot easier for European kids to compete in it than North Americans or South Americans. Yeah, okay. So maybe we need to consider, you know, or we do continentals. That's also an approach ready to have continental championships in different countries, also for youth. And then you can be

North American junior champion or South American junior champion. If you cannot make it to the European event. Yeah, that's very true. Yeah. It just gives more and more people a chance and just to grow that network and grow the sport. And yeah, no, I'm, okay. I'm curious to see what's going to come out of that. But, yeah, overall happy that it went well, happy. You got to see some innovation. It's been pretty fun. And, when's your, when's your little one popping in doing his first.

Luc Moore (56:07.822)
first little backflip a few years away. Yeah, I mean, I had him on the board already with me together. But he's still, he's only two and a half. So he's not there yet. A few more years, I think. But if you see, I mean, there are some kids out there with seven, eight years that already trained backflips. So it's not that long. No, it's not. Far away from me anymore. Yeah.

You could do some like a virtual reality stuff starting on them, you know, get some of the riders to do that. Somebody. Yeah. Well, I seen, I mean, you probably seen that too. I mean, I see obviously regularly kids, for example, that train maneuvers on trampoline, no, with wings in their head, no front flips, backflips, winking the hand. It's perfect. I mean, it's, it's such a great, the wing is such a easy tool.

where you can train on a skateboard, on a snowboard, in a trampoline. You can do a lot of these things that will help you to master all these maneuvers on the water and do them on land before. I mean, just the control. I don't know if, I guess a lot of you saw those videos of actually Chris doing this in Tarifa on the dune with a lot of wind, like just floating in the air, jumping off a dune and then just...

hanging on the wing for like 10 seconds. And that already needs a lot of control to be able to power the wing as much that you're not stalling it and you're not having too much or too little power. You know, all these things matter. These are all like these fine things that matter gets you the right feel for the for the wing and the control on the water later. Yeah, that is true. Yeah, like all the basics.

I don't know if you tried jumping off of a dune already with a wing in your hand, but I have tried it a few times and it's not that easy to stay up in the air. I'll try it. I'll have to try it. There are no dunes here in Mexico. Maybe I can find, I can jump off a log in BC. Just make sure not to slip and smack myself, but definitely have to find a spot for it. I'll have to see. So you have a little break then.

Luc Moore (58:28.27)
And a little bit of time off for everybody to recoup. And then the next one is in you're talking La Palma in Spain. La Palma. Yes. Next one is in La Palma, which is a youth world championship in surf freestyle and free fly slalom. So we have three age categories under 19, under 16, under 14. And then there's a week break after that in the Canaries, but we're staying in the Canaries. And then we go to Grand Canaria for a pure big air event.

no other disciplines. So we're going back to the legendary windy spot of Pozo. But we're going to compete this time around the corner, like not in Pozo directly, just around the bunker, so a few hundred meters downwind. But the wind is pretty much the same, a bit more sideshow. We'll run the Big Air World Championship only. It will be together an event that's combined with the kite Big Air World Tour.

So we're going to probably see also athletes that are competing on both disciplines because we know there's a few guys that do pretty well also on kiting. And then the week after we're going to the neighbor island in Fuerteventura where we've been last year already for free fly slalom and surf freestyle as well, a six days event, two disciplines. Yeah, and then it's end of July. So...

Yeah, so there's a let's say a month, a month long lag in the Canary Islands from the end of June till the end of July. Yeah, and then we have another break until September. Okay, well enjoy your time off. Enjoy your family time. And how are the conditions looking like in Mauritius?

You're going to get anything over the next month? Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's pumping actually at the moment. I'm just receiving videos and photos of my friends and I'm thinking, shit, I have to get on the plane soon. But the season has just started, so I'm not worried. It's just the first swells of the year that arrive and usually May, June, it's a really good time. Really looking forward to be back on the island and ride some decent waves myself.

Luc Moore (01:00:46.35)
Yeah, about two weeks. I should be back out there. Well, safe travels. Thanks for coming back on chatting with us today. Hope the rest of your day goes well. Yeah, you too. Thank you so much for having me. Absolutely. All right. Thanks everybody for joining us. Ciao ciao.