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KSP World Tour 2012

Round 1- Cascais Pro, Guincho, Portugal

 

Lee ‘Pasty’ Harvey recently drove down to Portugal for the first stop on the 2012 Kite Surf Pro Tour at Guincho near Lisbon.

After a pretty miserable winter on the wave front in Cornwall, I travelled out a week early to get some practise in the famous howling winds of Guincho armed with a full quiver of North kites from 12 down to 5m. An epic session at Buracos on the way down followed by a few windy days, one even on the 5 and when it was time for the comp to start, I was feeling confident on a good result and start the year off well on achieving my goal of bettering my 2011 rank of 10th.

So the first day of competition saw no wind but waking on the Sunday, it looked promising wit good waves and little cloud. The wind was up and down all day but we finally started around 3pm. I was up in heat 3 and dominated my heat riding on the 6’0 Wam and 12m Fuse against Chilean ripper and ranked 7th, Juan Pablo and Mark Moore from Canada. This meant I advanced into round 3 and a match up against Mitu Monteiro which I was really looking forward to. In the next few heats the wind gradually dropped until it was called in heat 5.

The next few days were super light with heat 5 being run 3 more times until it eventually counted. By the end of the week it was looking like we may not have time to finish due to the poor forecast so the organisers decided to run round 2 of the men’s and women’s simultaneously. With only a few hours of good wind, this was unfortunately still not enough and I didn’t get to fight against Mitu and we were left with no result and equal points.

The closing party was held in the city of Cascais at the Citadel, which was great fun and awards were given out for the highest wave scores for both men and women.

Still I had a great time yet again in Portugal with some amazing waves and super friendly people. You can check out my video of the trip including some spots before and after the comp below.

I would like to thank- Mum, Dad & Tara for helping towards fuel costs and all of my sponsors for keeping me going with kit throughout the year- North, Resin8, West, FCS, Freeriders, BKSA.

Stay tuned to my website www.leepasty.co.uk where you can also like my Facebook fan page to stay up to date with all my adventures. Next up Mauritius in September for the One Eye Pro.

Cheers

Lee

Big news and a massive boost for Cornwall's Kitesurf Racing stars like 3 times British Champ, Denzil Williams from Par and Lee 'pasty' Harvey from Hayle. The full report is below-

The International Sailing Federation (ISAF) has confirmed the final event and equipment selections for the Rio 2016 Olympic Sailing Competition to be Kiteboarding. After a long discussion with a lot of enthusiasm and support for both sports, ISAF Council voted with a 19 to 17 majority that Kiteboarding will replace Windsurfing for the men's and women's board events in Rio.

ISAF President Göran Petersson stated: "Kiteboarding has proven to us that it is ready to be included into the list of prestigious ISAF Events and it is a fantastic addition to the sailing programme for the 2016 Olympic Games."

Sir Richard Branson, one of the IKAs Olympic Ambassadors and supporters from the very first minute added: “Well we all flew a kite to get kiteboarding in to the Olympics and unbelievably the kite has landed in Rio! Kiteboarding is now an Olympic sport! To celebrate this, myself, my family and a few friends will this week attempt to kite across the English Channel to show off the beauty of kiteboarding.”

In November 2011 an evaluation group was appointed to examine kiteboarding formats with the board events for Rio 2016 defined as 'windsurfing and/or kiteboarding'. The Evaluation Group recommended that kiteboarding be included in the ISAF Event family including the ISAF Sailing World Cup and the ISAF Sailing World Championships. ISAF Council then went one step further when selecting Kiteboarding to be part of the Olympic Sailing Competition in Rio 2016.

IKA Executive Secretary Markus Schwendtner said: "The decision today will change the lifes of thousands of kiteboarders that now can live their Olympic dream. The National Sailing Associations will now invest serious money to include kiteboarding into their programs and coach and support the riders to go to the Olympic Qualification events. We never thought we would get this far in such a short time."

Kristin Boese, 9x Kiteboarding World Champion and strong ambassador for the Kiteboarding in the Olympics Campaign concludes: "It was incredible to see that council showed so much support for kiteboarding during yesterday's debate and that alone was very exciting for us. However, we never thought that we were going to stand a chance when it comes to the straight vote between kiteboarding and windsurfing and it was such a huge surprise when the result was announced. I will never forget this moment. I am so grateful for all the hard work the IKA and many others have put into the Kiteboarding in the Olympics campaign.“

The events to be contested at the 2016 Olympic Games are confirmed as:
Men's Kiteboarding
Women's Kiteboarding
Men's One Person Dinghy - Laser
Women's One Person Dinghy - Laser Radial
Men's One Person Dinghy (heavy) - Finn
Men's Two Person Dinghy - 470
Women's Two Person Dinghy - 470
Men's Skiff - 49er
Women's skiff - 49er FX
Mixed Two Person Multihull - Nacra 17

These ten events will be featured in the 2012-2013 ISAF Sailing World Cup which kicks off in Melbourne in December as well as in the ISAF Sailing World Championships in Santander, Spain in 2014.

Watergate Bay, Round 2 BKSA Nationals

Last weekend was the 2nd round of the British Race series,
With a 2.9 swell forecast and 20 knots wind, we all knew we were in for a treat with the course racing on the first day held at Watergate Bay in Cornwall. Unfortunately the committee boat did not make the journey to the venue so everything was run from the back of a jet ski which raised a few eye brows but we battled on and did the job anyway.
All the top names were there, world champion Steph Bridge, 2010 British Champion Callum Edge, Cornish legend Lee “Pasty” Harvey and of course myself Denzil Williams. This event was combining National Round 2 of Course racing with surfboard racing and a Wavejam, so it all kicked off with Racing in the challenging conditions, the start line was between the bksa truck on the beach and the start buoy on the water which just so happened to be extremely close to where the waves were breaking, making the start extremely tricky, it was a case of either starting in the impact zone of the waves with plenty of speed or to stay out of the impact zone and drop in at the last moment, most people tended to go with the later.
I was racing on the rrd K65 it is last years race board and I felt a bit lonely having a 4 fin setup compared to every other rider using the more modern 3 fin, less drag setup but the K65 is a great board to ride that I found very quick to get the hang of riding and still proved to be a good board.
The first race of the day started with just Ollie Bridge crossing over the start line on the green flag, with most of the fleet crossing over closer to the beach quite a while afterwards! It was all a lack of communication and misunderstanding which led to confusion on whether the race was running, later it was decided to discard this race.
The rest of the races started without hitches and race 2 started with most of the pack close together but then Ollie Bridge took the lead and kept it, most riders were on around 9m kites and their dedicated race boards, which were mainly north, RRD and a Aguera Board. Ollie finished 1st with myself in 2nd. The 3rd race of the day saw a similar start with the pack together but then there was a lull soon after the start and while tacking Ollie and Steph Bridge managed to tangle their kites leaving Callum, Pasty and myself jostling for the result, Callum was in front for most of the race until the final downwind leg, he was in front, then Pasty followed by me but to Callum’s disappointment he crashed halfway down to the finish line, Pasty caught up with myself really close but then Pasty suffered the same fate as Callum allowing myself to slip by him, finally Callum took the last gybe slightly too wide allowing me to slip in front of him and wining by about 2 feet, so close and a real good fighting finish.
That ended the days racing and the wavejam began with 3 heats of riders with the top 2 progressing through to the final, being marked on overall impression on the waves, the conditions were not the greatest with onshore winds messing the waves up but the riders made the most of what was on offer.
I saw some very nice tricks being made and tried on the water, notable was Pasty’s strapless backroll and Callum going for a 180 hop to blind and then trying to spin out but biting the dust/sea! In the end Pasty took 1st place with me coming in 2nd, I missed who came in 3rd place that day.
Day 2.
The forecast was for stronger winds and a bigger swell which in the end led to the racing being cancelled due to unsafe conditions but a second wavejam was held in the even more onshore conditions than the day before. Pasty was not quite so on form today and got knocked out in his 1st heat while stand out riders Alex Hapgood, Sean Facey, Neil Harper and myself making it through to the final. It was a 15 minute final with all the riders making the effort to get out back for the larger cleaner waves to make the bigger impression on the judges, Sean was riding exceptionally well and I saw him catch a considerable large wave just as the heat started and Alex seemed to be charging all the time with good solid riding, Neil always seemed to be out the back I guess he was going for the big guns while I mixed it all up with quite a few out the back big waves and also selecting some smaller clean waves that materialized on the inside.
In the end it was Sean 1st, myself 2nd and Neil in 3rd.
At the prize giving they combined the scores of the wavejam so overall the results were

WaveJam
1st Denzil Williams
2nd Lee Pasty
3rd Joint - Neil Harper/Alex Hapgood

Race Results
1st Denzil Williams
2nd Lee ‘Pasty’ Harvey
3rd Callum Edge

Thanks to Denzil for the write up!