Wing Foil World Tour (GWA) Show Episode #4 - Recap of Leucate France 2024

Episode Transcript:

Luc Moore (00:03.118)

Welcome to the Wing Life podcast, where we talk about wing foiling and the lifestyles of those who enjoy this great sport. Hey, Tom, thanks for joining me on our fourth GWA Wing Foil World Tour episode. Today, we're going to recap the last event. Looking forward to it. Yeah, thanks for having me again. Always a pleasure, obviously, having a little recap from our competitions. And I think...

Yeah, it's been the second event of the season. The first one was a banger already on the wave discipline. And I would say, yeah, it continued the same way. We had the freestyle discipline and the free flight, the surf freestyle and the free flight slalom disciplines, first season events. And it's been amazing. It's been a really good competition. And I think all the people who were watching, they saw, you know, we had really extreme conditions. And last year we've been there.

in like hard with a yeah, not bad conditions, but we didn't get like that full strong wind that the area is known for. But this year we had we organized decided to extend the event by two days. So we had an eight day window and we cut a couple of decent, decent windy days. Probably the I would say one day was the windiest day we have competed on the WingField World Tour so far even more than Gran Canaria last year. Whoa, whoa. All right. So for

people that are brand new to wing foiling and just starting to follow the tour. Like where was this tour event? Cause I heard it's at a pretty famous windsurfing or kind of wind spot. Yeah. So the, the event was in Leucat, La Franquille. It's a part of Leucat that's in the Southwest of France on the Mediterranean coast, very close to the Spanish border. And it's a really known area for wind water sports. It's very windy. I mean, in the

Luc Moore (02:04.206)
In the spring and autumn time, you have those famous Tramontana winds that basically we are very close to the Pyrenees. So when you're on the beach, you can see the mountains in the back, a few, let's say a hundred kilometers in the back with snow on top. And then from there on, the whole land is flat all the way to the sea. And there is this famous Tramontana that starts at the foot of the Pyrenees and then just...

makes his way out to the sea in the Mediterranean and gets the stronger the further it travels, the stronger it is. It's actually way stronger even further offshore, but that's not where we're competing, but it was strong enough. I'm not worried about that. Yeah, I heard. Yeah, and it's a very long beach there where the wind basically, this Stramontana comes offshore, like cross offshore to offshore. And it's the Mondial d 'Ivoire, which is the event that is hosting the Wingful World Tour.

is one of the most traditional wind water sport events in Europe. It was this 27th edition. So it's a long time ago that this this event started first time in the 90s. And it has a lot of visitors too. So we had an eight days event and there's an event village as well where, you know, we had the windy days were during the week. So on the weekends when most people come, we had nice sunny weather and I think

probably 40, 50 ,000 visitors, I would say at the event. So it was a big audience. Not on the days where we were competing because as I explained, it's been during the week and when the tram on Tana blows, it's also not that warm. This I can tell. It's been around 10, 12 degrees, maybe 14, but you know, with having 40, 50 knots, the wind chill feels a bit different than the real temperatures are. And yeah, it's a really, really long sandy beach.

that's starting in a traditional old French village. It's known for the area for its oysters. They have good food down there. Most of the places in France, they have good food, but we were staying in a really nice campsite called Viglamo. It's like a five -star camp with really nice bungalows and swimming pool, jacuzzi, gym.

Luc Moore (04:30.958)
where all the riders and the crew were accommodated. So we're all staying at the same place, which is very convenient. And then the spot is just in front on the beach. The only challenge was that, so this tramontana winds blow offshore, but you can have the opposite wind direction as well. We didn't have that during the event, but like a week before the event, there was very strong south winds that modified the sandbanks and basically flooded the whole beach. So...

to get to the competition side, we had to use tractors that took all the riders and the crew through the water through a lake to get basically to an island where the comp site was set up. Oh no way. And containers where all the yeah, well like only need deep water. But if you didn't want to walk through the water, you could be on a tractor. You could have been walking, you know, if you have shorts or you're in a wetsuit.

But yeah, it's a really great area. The whole coast there of France is very known for a strong wind. Not only Leucard, you have Groussaint just next doors. This might ring a bell for many people. That's where the Defi Wind, Defi Kite, Defi Wing event is taking place. I think just actually in two weeks, just after the GWA, the Wing Fold World Cup in Tarifa, the next one, which is on the first to fourth of May, right after the...

the wing, the FI wing will start there and Grosso, which is just a few kilometers. That's all my list to go to that. Oh, yeah. Yeah, that's a, it's a, it's a very unique event and, uh, and a couple of other, you know, um, spots that are really known. Uh, so this whole area has a lot of people, not only French people, also people from all over Europe that drive there to, to do wind surfing, kite surfing, um, wing foiling.

You know, just a day after basically we finished the Wingful World Cup, we had the next storm and some of our crew are working on the kite tour as well, including myself. So I've been staying a few more days in Bakra, which is just 20 minutes from Leucat, different spot where we were running the kite bigger World Cup just the three days after the event because we had another forecast with 50 knots.

Luc Moore (06:52.75)
you know, and that event is on a waiting period. So this event is scheduled on a one month waiting period. And as soon as the conditions are on 72 hours before we are calling green light, and then everybody travels there, or is already there. So yeah, that just shows you like in that time of the year, you have this tramontana pretty regular blowing, sometimes it can blow for two weeks in a row. But let's say you have a strong push once a week, then you have five, six days.

lighter winds or no wind and then it comes back and it pushes again and when it comes it's it's regular 32 40 up 50 knots I mean on the strongest day the strongest cast we measured was 62 knots. Holy shit. Wow. Yeah. And wing and wing and yeah, the smallest the smallest wing I saw on the beach was a 1 .8. Okay, that would say something that would say something.

So overall, how did, let's start off with like the surf freestyle. Like how did that portion of the event go for both the ladies and the guys?

Yeah, obviously the first event of the season is always interesting because, you know, we hadn't didn't have a competition since November in freestyle and everybody was training. So the first event of the season always is the one to kind of test out, whereas the level of everybody, you know, who are the hot shots at the moment. And we had a couple, I mean, we had a lot of people who wanted to enter the event. As on all the World Cup, it's limited to a certain number, which is 28 in freestyle.

So we had a long waiting list again of people who wanted to enter and a lot of new faces that send video applications. But yeah, it's been a tough battle to get a spot for the event. And we obviously had very strong winds. So as I said, the forecast, we had three really strong days of termontana. We started off the first day with, I would say, solid 35 to 40 knots. And then the second day was even stronger with

Luc Moore (09:01.262)
with in the morning was kind of all right, 25 knots, but pretty soon the sun came up and we were at, let's say consistent 40 to 50 knots with gusting 60, as I said, not for the whole day, but for a couple of hours. And well, obviously not a lot of people.

train too often these kind of conditions. So it's pretty fair. It's the same for everybody. But you could see those people like Chris, obviously he's used to strong wind in the gorge and a couple of other people that train in that strong winds, were more used to it to others. But you could see on the riding of everybody, they had to adopt their tricks to the conditions. It's not something where you might pull off the most technical tricks that you're not really safe if you are fully overpowered on a 2 .5 wing.

And so it's been interesting. We saw a lot of front flips. Everybody was a lot into big front flip rotations and combos, which is a bit safer, I would say, to pull in these kind of conditions to keep the control. We didn't see too many. We didn't see, yeah, for example, last year, you probably remember end of last year.

you know, the top guys started to do their back mops or their handle passes, basically passing their wing behind the back. No, this is something which is not easy to do in 50 knots, as you can imagine. So we didn't see too much of that. I mean, Malo was pulling a couple and Bastiaan, but yeah, it was pretty interesting to see as well that more or less nearly every freestyler now, nearly every freestyler is using a boom.

be able to perform. If you don't have a boom, you basically cannot do a back mop. So if you want to be competitive and you want to be able to pull off this trick, you need to use a boom because on a handle you will probably always fail to grab it blind behind your back. So they're doing stalled front flips, because I see them, they're just boosting, holding for a while, stalling into a front.

Luc Moore (11:19.693)
And like for, I don't know, anybody at home who hasn't played in 40 knots, like stuff happens fast. Like it's insane. Like, if you move the wrong way, you're just going to get tossed. Like how, did you see any crazy wipeouts or complete where they would just let go of their boards to kick out or anything like that? Or they just used to it? No, actually not. I didn't see too many crazy wipeouts. I mean, of course,

there was a couple of uncontrolled moves in that strong wind, especially, you know, the wind is not constant, so you might be in your heat and it's always a challenge to choose the right wing, no? Because if you are on these really small sizes, as I said, at 1 .8 was the smallest I saw, but a lot of people were on 2 .5 skies, 2 .0, 2 .5s. No, these wings don't have a lot of power, so in between...

The gusts, you might be even underpowered on the two meter and in the gusts you're going to be completely overpowered. So it's really difficult choice what equipment you go for on the wing size. And yeah, obviously when the gusts were hitting, you could see that they had to hold on to keep things under control. And especially, you know, like 1080s, like sidewards rotations, multiple rotations are very technically in strong wind.

And we've seen a lot of combos and we've seen a lot of combo front flip combos, back flip combos, 1080s, clean 1080s. What was impressive to me was a lot of the landings where this was rewarded big, obviously, if somebody in these kind of conditions is able to land straight on the foil. Landing being straight back up on the foil, that's really, really technical.

So that's usually rewarded quite big. And also on the girls side, I mean, we had seen the first, you know, the first I've seen in combo backflip into frontside three by Nia. So I think that's a girls first definitely in an event. So the level has been pretty decent also with the women. And yeah, I have to say I wasn't sure we're having these strong winds, how...

Luc Moore (13:42.509)
how good the show is going to turn out, but it's been, yeah, it's been good. I mean, it's a flat water sport without kickers and the height that people were jumping. I know we didn't measure it, but it was decent. You wouldn't think there to do that without a kicker. Everything becomes so weightless in 30 to 40, even windsurfing, right? Like when I windsurf in 40 knots, my 80 litre feels like it's nothing. You just, you just loft.

So I can't imagine what that would be like on a carbon foil, a board that weighs next to nothing and a little juicy little kite almost. So that must have been pretty cool to watch. Any kind of new moves or anything that people were holding into their bags because they had been training this whole time? Because this was the first one, right? Yeah. I mean, we saw in competition now like multi combos, I call it, meaning linking more than two tricks.

you know, seeing like a triple combo, even quadruple combos, which really like doing a backflip, popping into the front of three, popping into another front of three, popping into another front of three, but everything really fluent. So this has been quite, you know, not that this has not been seen before, but it's not something that is easy to pull off in any conditions.

And then obviously, yeah, backflip into backflip combinations, also attempts of frontflip into backflips. And yeah, I mean, especially as I said, due to the strong wind, there was a lot of emphasis on frontflip rotations. So guys going big, stalling it, frontflip landing into a combo, all kind of, or even coming down on the 360, like, you know, frontflip and then air 360 or frontflip into even...

air 720. But it's not been I think on the technical side, like, I know that some of them have tricks in their bag, in their bags that they didn't show due to the conditions that are only easier if the winds are a bit lighter. So I guess we will still see some new moves in two weeks in Tarifa. Depending, I mean, also Tarifa can have 50 knots. So let's see. See what shows up.

Luc Moore (16:06.829)
Yeah, but I think probably the chances are big that it's not going to be as windy as Leucata and then we're going to see some some new let's say medium wind tricks. Yeah, no, it's been exciting and I especially, you know, a couple of young guns, as I said, you know, they had some of them appeared already last year, some of them for the first time that gonna, you know, gonna cause some some trouble in the future soon.

some young boys that are on their mission at the moment. We had one of the boys from Austria, they are two brothers, Thomas and Alexander Achler. One of them just, one was injured, so the other only one of them competed. He just missed to get to the final by a split of a point. Oh wow, good for him. Yeah.

So strong rider and then we have a couple of young ones that are 14, 15, 16 at the moment and they're pushing hard on the freestyle discipline. Obviously conditions were hard, were difficult. A big, I think, not surprise, but he was deserving it. But a great result was also for, I mean, Chris was winning and he was...

Hard to beat, let's say Chris McDonald. I think on the final he scored like a 28 .5 out of 30. So near perfect score, which is hard to beat, obviously. I mean, he's just a machine. Chris is so safe. In a lot of heats, he comes out of the water with dry hair because he never crashes. And he just pulls off everything. He can.

He can show in the heat, you know, and everything is clean and everything is maybe too clean even, you know. He's perfecting his moves, but we had also Noah Kyola, who's competing on the tour for a few years already, same in the wave discipline, who is a really strong rider, who finished up in second place and the first time on that position in a World Cup event. And yeah.

Luc Moore (18:27.405)
He was on Chris's heels. Definitely. He's hot to, to give him a run for his money. And knowing how he, how he also competes in waves. Nowhere. I mean, he was doing well. He's doing all the wave events as well and doing very good. He's an amazing all rounder and still very young. Only 16, I think now or 17, 16. He's a bit younger than Chris.

And I mean, for him, it was also amazing competing in his home country in front of his home crowd. Basically, maybe he's not from Leucat, he's from Corsica, but being French, he gets a lot of attention obviously in the French event, which I think is great for him. Oh yeah, that would have been. So I guess who would stand out, let's say on the guy's side, we'll hop over to the lady's side next, but who would have stand out, I guess, for the top kind of top move and that, because.

Chris, what was it, the first time you had a triple rotation? Because I saw that as a 10 point. But is there anything else that stood out from even any of the, it doesn't have to be just the final, but little shout out to them for whoever it was that stood out the most? Yeah, I mean, from my side, definitely Chris and Noah. You know, with the tricks they've been showing, Noah, some backflip into backflip, clean combos, Chris with multiple, you know.

multi combos, triple combos, and also dead 1080s. I mean, the level has been dense, as I said. Malo was riding very well as two. He just missed out a bit on the final heat. Had too many crashes in the final, but until the final, he was definitely up there to be in the top two, three. That was clear, you know, by the level he was riding. Also,

showing a bit more innovation with, as I said, handle passes. He trained a lot on these tricks and he has a few more in his bag. But on the final, he didn't get his things really together as he wanted. He had too many crashes to end up with a solid score. So he finished the final in fourth position. But he was pretty outstanding too, I have to say. As well as Bastian Escoffé, obviously he's always a powerful rider, goes very big.

Luc Moore (20:52.749)
but maybe on the consistency is then, you know, not as, let's say, consistent as a couple of others. Axel was writing very well, Axel Gerrer. And yeah, and as I said, one of the standouts for me was also Thomas Acherer, one of these Austrian brothers who just missed out on the final, but he's somebody to watch out for the future as well. Okay.

Beautiful. All right. So I'm glad that one went well and how did the ladies fare in this? Because I saw Nia's and there was some pretty, pretty amazing moves coming from their side.

Yeah, well, the lady's been a, yeah, it's been a quite a Nia affair, I would say. I mean, she was riding outstanding in both disciplines. And I mean, she's the world champion last year in both the disciplines and he's she has even stepped up her game even more now. I think she's been training. I don't know if she trained a lot, but enough to to even elevate her level even further.

As I said, her riding in freestyle was hard to match for any of the other girls. I think Nia could probably even compete in some of the men's heats. Really consistent she has. And the first time we saw backflip into frontside three combos from a girl. And she has just taken down everybody with, let's say, Larry.

very clean performance. But it was good to see what I liked on the girls fleet that I think was the biggest. Well, the move looks so clean. I mean, she's doing it perfectly. Maybe she doesn't do it as high as some of the guys, but you know, in terms of how clean the execution is, it's not a big difference.

Luc Moore (22:54.893)
What was really amazing to see at this event, we had, I think, the highest number of women competing so far. So we had nearly 20 girls that were competing on the freestyle side, or in total, both disciplines, a little bit less. And yeah, it was good to see some young blood also on the girls' side. And I see for the registrations also in Tarifa, we...

The girls are stepping up, so we're getting a bigger number of girls competing now, which is great.

And also the level is getting more and more dense. For sure it's starting to specialize a little bit more now. Some put their focus more on slalom, other ones on freestyle or on waves. But yeah, we had the regular girls, Nia, we had Kylie Ma, the archer. She was doing really well. She's the one who, you know...

was having a great performance on the Big Air last year. She's used to strong wind. So she was riding well. And we had some girls from Germany. We had some French girls.

Luc Moore (24:18.029)
even from the Caribbean. So it's been a really good mix and interesting to see some new faces that hopefully will be with us for the whole tour. Oh, that's exciting. Glad to see that that's growing. Yeah, and it was, I mean, obviously the conditions were tough for the girls with that strong wind and...

Yeah, we have for anybody. It was yeah, no, I don't even know if I could wing in 50 knots. But now it's been crazy. It's been it's been some at some part. I mean, on the second day, we started into the by the first day of the tramontana, we run all the way freestyle to the semifinals. So we're just the semifinals left. And then the second day, we started also with the slalom first in the morning because we want to keep the finals for the afternoon when there's more people on the beach. And

Yeah, the wind turned seriously on. It was freaking windy, I have to say. I mean, everybody was there. When we were running the free -fly slalom, we even had to stop competition at some point for an hour because we were struggling with the boats, you know, to be able to provide the safety as the anchors were not holding anymore.

of the, of the boats on the race course. So the anchors got ripped out. Yeah, that's 50 knots for you. Yeah, exactly. I mean, it's, it's a, it's a, it's a flat water sport that luckily makes it a bit easier, but yeah, the anchors rip out and you can't keep position and you can't provide safety because in this kind of situation, safety is a big issue. If you, if you are competing in, you know, especially in slalom, it's not only four people in the water, you have 10.

10 or 11 people in a heat. And it can happen that four or five people have a problem at the same time. Then you need to have enough bolts to provide safety for each one of them. So this was our talk. Because you were saying the wind was more side off to offshore. Was that right? Yes. Yeah. Oh, shit. Okay. Yeah. So the races were really close to the beach, the start line. But then as we are running a downwind course, the finish was a bit further away.

Luc Moore (26:31.501)
But yeah, you need to be able to obviously rescue four or five people if necessary at the same time. And you need to have the amount of boats for that, which we had. But yeah, for one hour, we then decided to stop until the wind kind of dropped a little bit off again, down to 50 knots, not being gusting 60. And then we continued with the competition. But yeah, this was, I think, the first time that we actually had to stop.

We were in the luxury position that because of the forecast having three full days with wind from morning till evening and we have progressed quite a lot on the first day, we were able to play a little bit with the right time when to compete and not have the pressure to start on sunrise and finish on sunset, which is a nice thing for a competition, also for the athletes.

We even had our media office on the beach. We have these containers on the beach, these are all jackals. So we have a judge tower in the container, media office. And the first day we arrived at the beach, the whole back wall of the container was broken from the wind, broken into the container. So we couldn't use the media office for the whole event anymore. And they had to basically empty one of the storage containers of the riders to put our media crew in it and be able to work on the beach.

Because in 50 knots, nobody can come down to the beach and repair anything. We had to wait till the wind died three days later. And that's sand too, eh? Just like pure sand getting thrown around? Oh yeah, it's been really sandy. It's been... I can tell you the shacuzzi was every evening pretty overloaded because everybody wanted to get a spot in there in the hotel.

Well, just your hair too. Like here, it's my first time in La Ventana in a pure sand spot, right? And you'll go to wash your hair and you have nothing but sand stuck to your scalp. And it's crazy how sand just gets everywhere. And it's not 50 knots here. So I can imagine what that would have been like for everybody watching your eyes, especially as well. And this is the first time running your new format. So how did that format go compared to the last one you were running?

Luc Moore (28:45.325)
Yeah, so we had quite a change. I mean, not in the course, in the free fly slalom format. We've been discussing that with the riders already last year, you know, that we need to work or we want to work on a change a little bit in the format. As I said, the course is the same. So the courses are still free fly. What the word says it's a downwind course with a free fly section. It's very technical. It's not so much about the speed. There is no big upwind sections.

where it's about the angle. So the courses didn't change, but the elimination format, due to the fact that the classic format we've been running so far in the past years, same like it is run in many other sailing classes and also the PWA, is basically not an unlimited number, but it's a maximum number of 15 eliminations. So you're running eliminations one after the other, one after the other, until the end of the event.

And you might do one because there is not much wind and you might do 15. Usually you do something in between, but you never know the exact number, you know. In the old format, you've been running. So we have 40 riders in the competition, for example, you're running a quarter final with four heats of 10, the best five advanced, then you have a semi -final, best five advanced, then you have a final. And this is one elimination. And then you do a certain number of those with a maximum of 15. And.

By the position of each elimination, you get points. The first one has a 0 .7, so it starts with the lowest. The second one has two points. The third one, three points, and so on. And then their points get accumulated. And in the end of the event, the one with the lowest points wins the event. And you have discards. So when you're reaching four eliminations, you can discard one result, your worst one. When you get to seven eliminations, you can discard two results. When you get to 11 eliminations, you can discard three.

And so that's how it's been running, but you never know when the event is basically finished, you know, so you never know, okay, is this not the last elimination or are we going to do another one or are we going to do another two, another three? So, you know, it kind of the first two, three eliminations in the past have been exciting because you have, you know, different guys winning and you can see who is on top and the position change, but I get you six, seven eliminations. There's not so much change anymore and people win the final again.

Luc Moore (31:04.109)
And you don't know if they actually won the event or not. You always need to calculate again. And for the media side also, you don't know whenever the event finishes, not like in freestyle where you know, okay, now there is the final and then it's over. So when, with the new format now, we have a fixed number of eliminations like we did before, but not that many. In LeCarte we were going for four. So it was only four eliminations with one disc cut, not more.

And in the same way like before, and after these four eliminations, you have a ranking. And then you have a final elimination. So these eliminations, the so -called qualifying eliminations, and then the top, in that case, the top 13 men after these four eliminations and the top six women qualify for the final round or the final elimination. And in this final elimination, it's not about points anymore. It's basically a knockout system where...

In Leucard, we had the top three after the qualifying being already in the quarterfinals and the other 10 starting before. And then you have, when you're winning in the first heat, you advance basically to the round four, to the quarters, and then the others have the second chance. And then you end up in the quarterfinals with those three guys that come from the qualifying, plus another three guys that come from this final round, from the first round of the finals.

But it's very clear basically you're out or you have a second chance or you advanced. It's not about calculating any points more in the final. And then in the quarters you have six riders. The top two get to the final straight. The other four go into the semi -final for a second chance. And then the top two from the semi -final also get to the final. And then you run one final heat with four riders in the water. The best ones so far. And...

This is the all deciding heat. Whoever crosses the finish line here on this heat first wins the event. And that obviously keeps the excitement until the last heat, like we have it in Friestad and like we have it in Waves. So you might be winning every heat, the whole competition, being the final, but you still need to win the final as well. And actually that's actually what happened, you know, in Leucard, we had the first one in the qualifying was Bastien Escoffet.

Luc Moore (33:29.549)
He was number one, seated in the quarterfinals already. He made his way to the finals, but in the final he had a problem, had a crash because of some reason with the gear. Finished fourth place and that's it. Even though he was in first position in the qualifying and then Francesco Capuzzo, who was doing well but was not in the top three qualifying for the quarter, I think he was sixth or seventh, made his way through the final elimination pretty well.

and made it all the way to the final, won the final and won the event. So it all keeps, let's say, all odds open till the last heat for those who make it, who qualify for the final. But the reason is that first of all, it is shorter. That's why we could play a little bit with running at the right time. You can schedule it better. So we were running two qualifying eliminations the first day, two qualifying the second day.

Then we had a longer break, everybody can take energy, and then you go with the top guys, you can present them, you go into the final elimination, and you know these are the guys who are going to battle for the top spot now. And then every heat is really like counting a lot, so you know the tension is on the beach, the tension is on the water for every heat. And with this old system, the more eliminations you do, the less tensions you have because it's not changing the result too much anymore.

But in this new format, it's similar to a medal race as it's done in Olympics and other classes as well. It's a bit of a mix. And we have got our experience. It was the first time we do it. And we had already quite a couple of debriefs afterwards about what's good, what's bad about it, and how we're going to keep working on it. So we're not going to keep it exactly the same. The basic principle of...

of having a certain number of qualifiers and then getting into a final round that's deciding the event with a limited number of riders, this is going to remain this main concept. So you're always going to see at the event basically a final elimination with a limited number of riders that need to qualify before where the last heat of the event will decide everything. Because this is what is attractive for media, this is what is attractive for the beach and you know the guy comes out of the line like in the freestyle here.

Luc Moore (35:50.509)
you know, Francesco was crossing the line, he put his hands up, he was stoked, he knew he just won the event without needing to calculate any points anymore. And this is what you want, you want to keep the emotions, you want to keep the excitement till the end. And this makes the slalom, you know, again, more fun to watch because every small mistake can have big consequences, you know. And, yeah. And this...

As I said, we're going to fine tune it. The event is now a couple of days past, so we had already quite a few meetings in Leukhardt itself after we finished. And we will fine tune it for the next event, which is in Fort Aventura in July. How are we going to continue with this final elimination concept? But I think it is the step in the right direction and everybody agrees on that. Is it the writers, the crew and the media? Because it...

makes it even more exciting to follow. And it's also more comprehensive because I think for people who are not insiders on how these point systems in sailing work, it's really hard to kind of understand the points why this one has so much. It's not difficult, but somebody who never been in it might not understand. But if you have a KO system, a knockout system in a final round and you know, okay, either you win or lose.

It's simple. And you know, there's a last heat. Like for all of North America, who's used to watching hockey and various sports, like you got a, for hockey, you have what 83 games in a season or something. And then you obviously you're collecting wins. So you're collecting points. So many people make it into the, to the playoffs. And then you got rounds and they're all elimination rounds. And then you have your final and.

Like it doesn't matter when you get into the playoffs, like you can lose in the first round against like the top seed can lose against the eighth seed and it doesn't matter. So in that sense, I think that's what makes sense to all of us who are used to watching football, baseball, hockey, all that kind of stuff. But maybe racers are more used to that format. But for me, it keeps the excitement because like you want to watch the final because if yeah, you want to watch it because you don't know who's going to win.

Luc Moore (38:09.069)
So I can definitely see how that would be and maybe more engaging for the riders as well, right? Like you still have to collect points throughout to make it to the playoffs, but then once you're in the playoffs, it's like you better give or else it could be it. No, exactly. I mean, you still have, as I said, in that system we're running now, you still have always a second chance. So if you lose one time, you're still in. But yeah, let's explain that a bit. Like how does that work? So certain. So.

You make it into the playoffs, I guess is what we can say. And then you have opportunities to keep getting into the next round. The top three, they make it straight into the quarterfinal. And the other 10, they start in the round one of the finals. And in the round one, you have 10. The top two straight jump into round four. The other eight have a second chance in round two. Again, in round two, the top two go into round four. The other six have another chance.

In round three, the top two make it and the rest is out. So that's when the first guys get eliminated. So in round three, you have six riders, top two go also into round four and three, four, five and six are out. Their final positions in the event are then the last four of the top 13. So it's 13, 12, 11 and 10. Then in the round four, you have six riders that qualified before for the round four and the top three,

jump into the quarterfinal, the other three out. And then in the quarters, again, you're with six riders where three of them were seated from the qualification. The other one came from the round before the top two goes straight to the final and the other four have a second chance. So anybody in that final elimination, even the ones seated in top has a second chance in case they miss out once, you know. It's a lot of races then, eh?

Yes, yes. And that's, for example, the question we had is casting an hour on one side. It's nice to have so many races because if you would build this on a final day, you have a longer program. It's basically it's seven heats. It's four rounds and then quarterfinals, semi -finals, finals. It's seven heats. It's not too long. I think we run the whole procedure, including the women, which the women had only quarter, semis and finals. So it was 10 heats.

Luc Moore (40:31.149)
I think we run this whole procedure in an hour and 20 minutes. So it's not too long. The final elimination was done. Obviously that's still a time that you can, that you can, yeah. No, no, because one heat, one race is two minutes, two and a half minutes, you know, the course is short. And then they go back to the start line. So in the end you want to build, let's say,

a good show for the final day and you don't want to end it in one heat. But on the other side, you need to have also, let's say, a system that makes you able to finish quick in case you might not have as much wind as we did in Leucat. So it's always a bit tricky to find the right solution. And of course, you can have different options. You can go either this way or that way and choose, but that's then tricky knowing the conditions. Our advantage in Leucat was that

the forecast was pretty clear. There were three days of decent wind and the rest of the time was not that windy. So we had to concentrate to get everything done in these three days. But you might go to a place where the wind forecast is on the light side and you don't know if it's enough or not. And then you need to think about when you're going to finish and when you're going to place the finals. So the more simple the system.

Yeah, no, no, no, we had, I can tell you, we had hours of discussion about this format before the event and now learning from the event also afterwards. We've been sitting with the athletes, we've been sitting with our race crew discussing about it. Everybody has his opinion about it, you know, and they had very open discussions. You know, that's what I like about like, like our whole WingFog World Tour concept that we really like value the feedback of everybody who is inside, you know, being an athlete, being an organizer, being a media person, being a sports crew.

Everybody has his ideas and they all get into the formats we run. We always try to make media attractive formats. That's important for us. We don't want to have formats of racing somewhere three kilometers out at sea where nobody's watching. We want something that's attractive for the spectator on the beach, that's easy to live stream if we have live streaming, and where we can have, yeah, also simple to understand for everybody.

Luc Moore (42:48.493)
Yeah, that completely makes sense. How did that side of the event go for the guys and ladies, anything stand out as, and what kind of speeds are they hitting in 50 knots? Yeah, well, we have not yet. This is something we might implement more in the future to keep using a couple of technical devices to measure data that is interesting to present.

But I know that if you guys were using GPS watches during the races and also in the training and I heard the top speeds that were measured were 35 knots, so pretty fast.

I mean, you know, in our format, for me, it was really interesting to see, to be honest, on that slalom format on the free fly. As I said, we have also a free fly section and obviously it's flat water, it's not waves, but it's been 50 knots. So free flying on 50 knots with the wind in your back, you don't need much, you know, you don't need to pump much, it just, it pushes you anyway, even if you don't have a wing in your hand. So.

the riders were able to go on a bit smaller foils than they were usually probably would use in this kind of course in lighter winds because pumping was not so much of an issue. But of course you don't want to go too small. I mean the winds were strong enough that you could go on a 500 front wing maybe on a kite race foil even but free flying on a 500 front wing is not easy if you need to pump it in the end.

So what happens if you fall off while you're in that free fly section? Cause you're not allowed to use your wing, right? Yes. Once when you're touching down with your board and you get to full stand, uh, still stand, obviously you can take your wing again. You can get yourself back on the foil and then you really need to release the wing again. But this is going to cost you a lot of time. So, but you're only allowed to do this once you're really in still stand. Not if the board touches one time down and you still keep going, you cannot take the wing.

Luc Moore (44:51.853)
So only if you get to still stand you can grab the wing get back on the foil But I mean this will easily cost you 10 seconds and in 10 seconds, you're gonna lose five six positions probably Usually the free -fly section is towards the end of the course. So the course was more like a start line along the beach Driving getting into this technical triangle that we like to do now Where you have to round the triangle of three marks up wind downwind one time with attack in between?

and then another gybe and then into the free fly section which was maybe 300 meters long or maybe longer. 400 maybe. And then, yeah, in the free fly section. But now, you know, the athletes are pretty used to that and they use the right gear to do so. I mean, I've seen most of them on 700, 800 front wings, high aspect of course, but pretty fast foils and they were able to get the free fly sections.

But there was this one kid that's been competing the first time actually, and he was, everybody was like, who is this guy? You could just see him on the race car, his name is Tom Pansar. He has been, I think, already on the Defi wing last year, showing quite good performance. And he was half the size than anybody else. I think he's 14 years old on a 2 .0 wing. And that kid is freaking fast. I think he was on the 500 kite foil.

And it just, the straight speed on the straight line, it looked like he's just put the nitro on and he was just flying by everybody. Yes. I mean, he was then in the free fly. He usually lost a bit of position, but he had good starts on the straight line. He was overtaking people all the time and everybody was like, Whoa, who is...

is that you know it was the first time we we actually had him on tour and I hope he's coming back because that kid is is damn fast. He was he was racing on a kite foil board I think the board he uses was like maybe 15 liters maybe 12. So basically he was on a kite foil board basically that thick and and a kite race foil and a 2 .0 wing.

Luc Moore (47:11.693)
And he sheeted in and he had so much speed. Yeah, no, it was impressive. Everybody was like, whoa, can't believe that kid can put so much power on the foil to be that fast, you know? Oh, that's cool. And how did the ladies do any of them stand out for you? Like Nia won the event. And how did that look like from their side? Yeah, Nia was dominating the free fly pretty much, I would say. I mean, she won.

every heat with a substantial lead. It was never even close that she had to fight at the end at the finish line, like it is on the guys side sometimes. The guys, it was interesting because we had crashes and people might be fast but still crashing on the free -fly section or on the jive and losing their positions. But Nia had a really solid performance.

I mean, Kylie was doing really well as well, but she had no chance to Nia to put her in risk for the first place at all. I think Nia at the moment, last year she made two world titles, and maybe this year she wants to aim for three or even four. If we know all of them, I don't know. I guess that's her goal. She will be definitely hard to beat, but the season is long, you never know, things can happen. I mean...

I don't wish her of course that she has an injury, but you never know, I think we know what can happen. And I think if she continues the way she started the year so far in freestyle and in slalom, she's going to be hard to beat for the other girls. She's got a chance. Oh, that's exciting. Yeah, nice. Cause a lot goes into a, even making it on tour, but then competing and having fun with it and making it to that level. Like,

I can start to relate a little bit more. Obviously we know the skill level of some of these athletes for both ladies and guys, but just when you're throwing yourself into these kinds of conditions, it's crazy how good they are and how much time and dedication they put in. Like it's unbelievable. And how much maybe natural skill to even be able to slightly compete, but the level still keeps going up and up. Like, I don't know what it's going to be like in a year or two. It's going to be insane.

Luc Moore (49:30.413)
No, no, no, clearly. And also on the girls side, there are a couple of new faces, as I said, that showed up. From the Caribbean, some young girls that got support. I mean, Oran was in the event, but she's still not 100 % fit after, you know, she had an injury in Brazil last year, had to take surgery and she's still not 100%, but she want to be back soon. And she's now helping out a lot on coaching for the French team.

And yeah, that was interesting. You know, the French Federation, they have their own wing foil section. They are pretty well organized. They are definitely, when it comes to this side, they are on the forefront of how wing foiling is organized and structured in France. They have their French Federation coaches for, they have their national team in wing foiling that get fully supported with coaches, with, they had their own boat on the water, you know, for support the whole time.

for the French athletes. So this is something that, yeah, that at the moment, obviously the event was in France and it's not on the events overseas where they have that. But yeah, this helps a lot. If you're on the water, you can have a support boat like they do in sailing with some water, with some snacks. You don't need to go back to the beach. Make things easier. You might have spare equipment to change on the boat.

So, yeah, and Auran has been helping out with that quite a bit. How did the overall event go with the organizers? Like you guys have been working with them for a while. Maybe we can give a little bit of a shout out to them for people who are new and just getting into this, but. Yeah, as I said in the beginning of this talk, it's quite a traditional and famous water sport events. It's 27 years.

So this event, the Mondial Livon, it's called, has had a lot of history when it comes to water sports. There has been multiple years of windsurf World Cups been running, kitesurf World Cups been running. All the legends have been at this event and winning this event already from Robin Ash to Bjorn Duncanback to Antoine Albault. You know, all these people have made it to this event in the past and partly won it. And...

Luc Moore (51:51.181)
Yeah, the organization is really good. It's a very experienced team. We like to work with them. It is an event that's not only now that the main sport is multi -sport events. So there was also windsurfing, there was also e -foil competition, there was SUP. But the main competition was the Wingfoil World Cup. So that's what they on the sports side are concentrating now on. There has been many years of windsurfing and...

kitesurfing in the focus and now since, yeah, since 2021, if I believe so. Yeah, since we, they were basically when we started the wingfoil world today, we're straight away like, yes, we want this in Le Cote. You know, we want to be some of the first ones having this new sport and they love it. You know, France is one of the biggest, if not the biggest market in wing foiling. The Frenchies are completely crazy about foils. So.

We are. It's like us. Yeah, but the French is I mean, you can just see how many French competitors are at every event. And at this event, especially, I think if I remember right, I have to look at the start list. But I think we have 25 French writers on the start list. Oh, wow. So I would say about 30 % or even more on this event. And they're all really high level. So it just shows you, you know, how popular.

First of all, foil sports are, and second of all, the French, they just love competing. They just love to see who is better than the other ones, and they are all into competition and events. And yeah, so the work with the organizer is always a pleasure. I can say it's been great. It's been also a really good move from them that, you know, the past years, we only had six days and we always missed out to get this. You always need to be lucky with the win.

but they were willing to put up additional budget to extend the event for two days to be sure we get the right conditions. We made it and, you know, get the right footage and get the right message out, you know, that this is one of the best places in Europe to do those kinds of sports. And then on the weekend we had, we had, yeah, we had beautiful weather with 25 degrees and the village was full of people. As I said, I think 40, 50 ,000 people over the weekend.

Luc Moore (54:12.013)
and we were able to pull off some some toeing shows with the boat. We had some autograph sessions. There was BMX and skating and going on and a lot of other exhibitions, good food. So very successful event. I think everybody has been pretty happy. And yeah, we definitely can't wait to be back next year. This is our goal. It's a long term relationship we have with this organizer. And we...

We definitely want to continue having this on tour and we'll see if we will add some other things next year to it. But like hard, there's kind of the season open in Europe usually. And I hope it will remain like that. I wouldn't, I wouldn't see why not. So what's next then for you guys? Where are you off to for the year? Your next one. Cause it's not that far away. No, it's not that far away. Exactly. It's less than two weeks.

on the 1st of May. We're going to start in Tarifa with the next freestyle event, the GWA Wing Fair World Cup Tarifa, the Tarifa Wing Pro. We have been changing the dates the last two years. It's been in October and we have changed the dates now to run in May, more in the beginning of the season, which is also a bit warmer, you know, south of Spain, summer is there already. It's usually a good time for the wind, for the strong wind as well.

It's usually stronger winds than in October. So if the Levante blows, we could have quite a high wind competition as well. I mean, if the Levante really kicks in, you can easily have 40 to 50 knots again. But yeah, it's just a good time of four days freestyle event. We have again, a very high number of people that wanted to enter this event and all the top freestylers will be there. So...

In less than two weeks, we're all going to meet up again in Tarifa. And then after Tarifa, yeah, we were heading to the Canary Islands in the end of June, first for the Youth World Cup and La Palma again. And then in July, we're going to be in the Canary Islands in Gran Canaria and in Fuerteventura. Got a little jam packed, little couple of months. I hope it goes well.

Luc Moore (56:39.277)
And I'm looking forward to catching up on a recap of some of those and seeing if with different wind conditions, see what kind of tricks they're still holding in their bags. That's what I'm interested in. So we're going to see. Yeah, I think Tarifa going to be already an interesting show because if the wind is not as strong as in Leucard, we're definitely going to see some different repertoire, I think. And, you know, Tarifa is also one of those.

Yeah, it's a water sport mecca. I mean, it's even more famous than Le Cote. Le Cote is in France, very known, but I would say Tarifa is the wind capital in Europe. I mean, that's probably the most windy place in Europe or one of the most windy places all year round. This whole town has developed itself around water sports, starting from windsurfing in the 70s, 80s, 90s, then...

hiding and now it's getting a fair share of wing foiling over there. You know, lots of young people that get into this sport and a lot of tourists that come down to wing for lots of wing for schools. They're very well organized in Tarifa and it's a great place to have a competition as well. It's a, you know, one of the most important spots in Europe to run and run an event. It's the south of Spain as well. So, you know, it's a laid back, a lifestyle with an old town.

that's having a vivid nightlife, it's having good food, it's just a good place for people that just love to train. A lot of our riders also go to Tarifa for one, two months just to hang out and train because they get on the water a lot. It's many different spots with different conditions and easy to reach as well. So you're getting flights to Malaga and in an hour and a half in the car you're there. Oh, perfect. All right.

Well, I'm looking forward to seeing how that one goes for you. And I guess, is there anything else you want to talk about this one? Are we pretty good to send this one off? No, I think I've told you, I mean, the most important thing is I think we had an awesome event. It's been intense for a couple of days. I think everybody, the feedback was great. As I said, I think I was super stoked that we have a new

Luc Moore (58:58.989)
We're playing with this new format now in Freefly that's still going to get some fine tuning, but it's great to watch. It builds up a better show and that's what we all want to do. It's been good to see everybody after the event in Cape Verde where we had all the wave specialists to see all the freestyle and the Freefly slalom family back again. I think...

So far, two events on the tour this year, both of them top. Nothing wrong. So I hope the season continues like that in 35 in two weeks. Awesome. Well, hey, thanks, Tom. Thanks for joining. And yeah, 100%. If we can have more windy, successful events like that, that sounds great. So I'm looking forward to catching up with you on the next one. Me too. Soon.

Yeah, very soon. All right, everybody. Thanks for joining us and we'll talk soon.