Northkites - Blog

Blog

2012-08-16 07:10:59 / North Kiteboarding

Fastest waterman on the planet!!! Best of three Event in Lake Silvaplana

BEST of 3 - the battle of the fastest waterman on the planet went into a second edition this year! Team Kitesurf won with Kitesurfer Dirk Hanel winning the individual title.

The BEST of 3 Event was held for the second time at Lake Silvaplana last Sunday and Monday. Olympic Gold medalists, world champions and legends in different sports gathered to battle for the title of the fastest waterman in three different sports: Windsurfing, Kitesurfing and Sailing. The 3 disciplines in which the riders competed were speed, slalom and course race.

In the windsurfing team, the 41 world title holder Björn Dunkerbeck, Karin Jaggi 15 times PWA world champion and Windsurf speed world record holder together with Patrik Diethelm the fastest shaper in the Windsurf world were nominated as winners.

In the Kite team Steph Bridge, 4 time course race world champion, together with Dirk Hanel, course race production master class world champion and German outright speed record holder and former nautical mile world record holder won the race.

The Kite team adorned itself with Ueli Kestenholz snowboard world champion and X-games winner, who is a passionate kiter and full on crazy extreme sports man! Moreover young gun Olli Bridge, son of Steph Bridge was part of the kite team!

The sailing team included the strong Moth specialists Mathis Renker, 4 times Alinghi Swiss Tour Match Race winner and 7 time Swiss champion as well as Phillip Käsermann. Together with the two German champions in Moth sailing Markus Steeg and Nina Zühlke.

Furthermore, each team was joined by local Heros and Riders in the different sports categories. On Sunday, the 35^th Wind Marathon ended with a sensation; for the first time the kitesurfers Dirk Hanel and Olli Bridge were faster than their windsurfing collegues.

By the time all sailors already had the 42 km marathon in the bones two slalom races where held. In the first race, the windsurfers Björn Dunkerbeck, Nicklolas Warenbourg and Patrik Diethelm where dominating. Due to a small incident on the starting line of the first slalom, Dirk Hanel was slowed down massively and could only catch up to position 4.

Whereas in the second slalom, after a clean start, Dirk was right in there on the same jibe mark with Björn and Nicklas. Then on mark three Dirk overtook the Windsurfers in the jibe, having the same or perhaps a bit faster downwind speed he held on to the victory in the second slalom. This final result was a great success for Dirk Hanel, being able to beat Björn who is leading the Slalom Tour of the PWA this year. Steph Bridge was also extremely happy to beat

Karin Jaggi in the direct comparison, who is currently leading the PWA tour in slalom.

In the afternoon a heavy rainstorm set in and with a good forecast for the second day the riders called it a day. Day two of the Best of 3 started out with 4 Course Races where again Olli Bridge and Dirk Hanel dominated the races taking all wins and three of the 2^nd places in all races. The starts where always really exciting and sometimes close calls! Then the complete fleet was literally flying towards the other side of the lake. While the Moths had an incredible upwind angle the combination of angle and speed gave the advantage to the kiters. Consequently after 4 races Olli scored first and Dirk second followed by Mathias Renker in the Moth in 3^rd place.

Last but not least, the races in the discipline speed were held. For this discipline the judging tower was equipped with a speed gun and communication display, so that all riders could see the maximum speed reached. The wind was getting a bit gusty which made it difficult for the athletes to line up for the start. Björn Dunkerbeck achieved the best speed result with 60,3 km/h followed by Patrik Diethelm, the fastest shaper in the world with 59,3 km/h. Kitesurfer Dirk Hanel, winner of the speed last year with 57 km/h. scored the third place, saying: “unfortunately the kites which performed so well in racing and also slalom where just not perfect for the speed due to an to flat profile”.

Team Kitesurf took a great victory in the team category not least because of the great performance of Steph Bridge beating Karin Jaggi in each discipline and Kitersurfer Dirk Hanel taking the win in the Individual Ranking.

After the two days of racing, everybody seemed happy and athletes as well as organizers agreed that this event has to be repeated next year with some more refined rules, maybe also at other places and in different conditions, but for sure with the same fun and enthusiastic teams like this year!

Final Results:

Team BEST of 3