From the 7th to the 14th of September, the IFCA World Championships took place in Hvide
Sande, Denmark.
It’s an exciting place I’ve visited a couple of times already for the PWA tour. Conditions can
range from very light to very strong winds, which is exactly what we got. The tricky part of
this range of wind? We were only allowed to register two boards and four sails, which meant
we had to sacrifice performance somewhere!
The first two days of competition passed with very little wind, and since everyone skipped
their small boards (for strong winds) during registration, the forecast was getting stronger by
the hour. By the time we got to the first day of wind, forecasts were predicting up to 45
knots! Basically, we were a bunch of nervous windsurfers hoping we could control our gear.
Once on the water, we managed to complete two eliminations in manageable conditions. I
didn’t have the best start to the event, but with a 5th and a 2nd place, it could have been
worse. The third elimination is when things started to get tricky—the wind picked up a lot,
accompanied by very heavy rain. After completing both the quarter- and semi-finals, the
conditions became unsailable. With low visibility and winds reaching up to 50 knots in the
harbor nearby, they decided to call it a day.
The following days were tricky in a different way. A lot of the time, the wind was on the
edge, resulting in several cancellations of heats and some heats being pushed through in less-
than-ideal conditions. In the end, we managed to complete a total of 5.5 eliminations, which
sadly isn’t much in six days of racing.
I didn’t manage to defend my IFCA World title from 2022. Bruno Martini, who was at the
top of his game all week, deservedly took the 2024 title—congratulations to him! In the end,
I’m happy to be on the podium again with a third-place finish. It hasn’t been straightforward
with the conditions, and with plenty of fast guys competing, it’s a solid achievement to take a
podium place home.
Now it’s time to focus on the foil again, as the next event will be the second stop of the PWA
Foil Slalom tour in Sylt. But before that, we have a great competition in Holland: The Real
Trip Makkum is back for another edition, so to everyone in Holland—hopefully, see you
there from the 20th to the 22nd of September!
