La PWA y la IWT se unieron por primera vez para armar un único tour mundial de windsurf en olas. La primera fecha en Japón no pudo completarse por falta de viento y las expectativas quedaron puestas en la fecha de Chile. Ahí fuimos con la banderita uruguaya a probar suerte, seguir aprendiendo y disfrutar con los mejores del mundo las condiciones increíbles que tienen los spots de la sexta región.
Este texto y video de la IWT cuenta un poco lo que fue la competición y todas las imágenes del evento están publicadas en la web de la PWA.
2023 Surazo Infernal is a Wrap
REFLECTING ON CHILE and the Growing Impact of the New Unified PWA IWT Wave Tour.
Leon Jamaer wrote in SURF Magazine this week that he thinks Chile’s Surazo Infernal was the first down the line left hand competition to count for the Wave World Title since Brazil in 2007. That may explain the hunger that fueled the much larger than expected turnout and the astonishingly high standard on display here at this ‘little’ 4 Star event.
Germany’s 5 x World Champion Philip Koster and Australia’s Jane Seman stole the show taking out Pro Men’s and Women’s divisions in powerful displays, but the depth and breadth of talent here is the big story.
41 Pro Men, 23 Open Am, 21 Masters, 5 Women, 5 Youth, and 3 Grand Masters, with a total of 75 heats, on 18+2 20 minute cycles for 75 x 20 minutes = 25 hours of wild competition to complete all divisions. Intense. Many big name riders struggled to make the top 16 in the pro men’s bracket. Some didn’t make the top 24. A few didn’t even make the top 32.
There was shock on many faces as results were called out to the waiting riders on the beach, but that’s life in this new bigger world of riders and events. If anyone thought Chile was going to be easy points they were sorely disappointed. Everyone was warned about how good the locals are, and there are a lot of them… not just Chile, but brilliant talent also poured in from Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil, the Caribbean and more. Riders are coming out of the woodwork for the exciting new Unified PWA IWT Wave Tour. That’s the big story. Something started here… something big… something unstoppable.
The 9 day event ran like a riders’ dream, with wind and waves showing up right on cue to give us a complete set of results across all divisions: Men, Women, Youth, Masters, Grand Masters, and Open Am.
We marched through the comp as we ran with our standard wave riding heats running at 18 minutes with 2 minute transitions. That gives us a clean predictable 20 minute cycle that started on the hour, or on the hour 20, or the hour 40, for 3 clean rider heats per hour. Every rider sailed at least twice using the round one ‘seeding round’ and the round two ‘redemption round’ system like the WSL for surfers. 4 rider heats with the top 2 advancing.
All this is familiar territory for experienced IWT riders. We’ve found this is a great system for wave riding events but for jumping events we, like the PWA, reduce heats to 2 riders to ensure we see every single ride and jump in each each heat for scoring accuracy. This was a full wave riding only event so we went full WSL.
The men’s final was a terrific showdown between diverse riders. Philip Koster 6 foot 2 and 210 pounds of raw power combined with his extraordinary control, power and precision. Camille Juban 5 foot not much and 140 pounds wringing wet combined with his riders’ flowing style always searching for the ultra critical lip crack and launch moments. Julian Salmonn 6 foot lots and lean build was hunting for bigger waves for his radical hard carving and long aerial style. Baptiste Cloarec 5 foot something, maybe shorter than Camille and similar weight, is utterly electrifying to watch because he’s totally NUTS!!
