Wing Foil World Tour (GWA) Show #2 with Tom Hartmann

[00:00:00] Hey, everyone. Thank you for joining us on the show today. I hope you're having a good week. We just got to

[00:00:07] La Vintana, Mexico, and I can't wait to get my first Wing Foil session in. If you haven't checked out our last

[00:00:14] episode, it was with Sarah Kita O'Fringa. She needs no introduction. She's the PWA World Champ. She joins us from Cape

[00:00:22] Town in between training sessions to talk all about her first Wing Foil sessions, how learning how to foil was like,

[00:01:23] The tour has had a lot of questions about how can I compete?

[00:01:26] So we include a section at the end of this episode about that.

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[00:02:45] guest on this podcast and I hope so far we were able to deliver some interesting insights of the world tour and other things you know happening in the

[00:02:48] ground or myself or things I do and the world tour events obviously and yeah

[00:02:55] happy to tell you more obviously we are just a week away from the first event of

[00:03:01] the season and there's gonna be straight the amazing vibe with the spectators too. It's easy for us also the judging side of the live streaming side to put on a good show for those who are not on the beach. And yeah, it's obviously the wave events always a bit tricky because you not ever we ran away from that on the GWA and nobody knew what to expect and I think it's been one of the best shows that Tour has put on last year definitely. And therefore the expectations are pretty high, which we could also see on the number

[00:05:45] of registrations. World Ranking 2023, a pre-quoted slide. And then you have video wildcards. So all the people who are not in 1212, but top 12 ranking, they can submit their videos. Regardless if they have competed last year or they've never competed. So we wanna open it to new covers that have been on tour, if it's still quite a new discipline. And there's a lot of good guys out there

[00:07:01] that haven't competed yet.

[00:07:03] They can just send in videos.

[00:07:04] And then the best guys out of the videos

[00:07:05] get selected as well to get into the call. It's been the highest number we have seen so far on the outregistration on Waventhets. So yeah, it just shows the interest in that discipline is pretty high. And I think also last year, you know, a lot of people were not sure if it's actually weak. Foila Brullen, Potho Preta, maybe didn't dare to go, but after seeing, you know, the action of last year,

[00:08:22] there's a lot of people who were keen and hungry to compete.

[00:09:26] at this spot or cannot handle the conditions. But you know it is it is it can be a bit intimidating that place you know especially when it gets big you get

[00:09:30] watched you you definitely go the rocks every time it's a it can get rough out

[00:09:34] there and it's maybe not for everybody and that's probably the reason why yeah

[00:09:40] we don't have so many ladies signing bit older? Yeah, we got a good mix. I would say an average we got a bit older guys than in the freestyle discipline for sure. But the minimum age for all the disciplines is the same, which is 14 years.

[00:11:00] We had a few people younger than that that wanted to ridden waves for years, maybe on different equipment than the wind, but they definitely know what's happening and what to do in certain

[00:12:21] situations.

[00:12:22] And in a spot like Punta Preta, it's not a place that everybody has in front of its

[00:12:26] doorstep and can train. got to have 30, 40 black chalk guys, world best guys out there on a given day. I mean, I know quite a few people that live in Europe and as soon as they see a forecast, they jump on the plane and fly to Kia Verde just for a week to score as well. So you have to deal with all that. And there were, I know quite a some of the riders as well. They said, I just want to ride what heats because that's the only time I can be out there 20 minutes only with one other guy in the water and nobody else can take away. How are the conditions looking? Is there a good groundswell coming? How are things lining up?

[00:15:00] We were still 10 days away from the first day point but let's say the given bay just shapes the wave running into a bay really clean. And yeah it looks like we're gonna get some good waves in the beginning of the winter for a couple of days but as I said we have

[00:16:21] we're looking with kite and wing folding together running five to six days of competition. So

[00:17:24] So let's keep our fingers crossed. Yeah, let's go with that.

[00:17:27] How big of a wave are you guys hoping for?

[00:17:31] What would be your ideal to run this for people on there?

[00:17:37] Well, I would say that the bigger it the only days where it's actually the speed is doable on the foil without the power of the wind meter. And so the bigger, I would say the more open the faces are, but it is more tricky to get out once you get hammered on the rocks.

[00:19:00] It's bigger of a mission to make's where people get into the water. The only thing is that the beach break, yeah you can get

[00:20:23] out the waves are not breaking as a small beach dump on the impact of the wave, which usually doesn't happen. The wing always floats on top of the wave. So the wave pushes the wing out the rocks and then the water pulls out and the wing stays in the rock and somebody, it always helps us on the beach, grabs the wing and takes it out. And then the athlete comes out of the water, has to climb up the rocks, which is a bit more tricky

[00:21:41] with a foil, but at least he doesn't have the wing anymore, gets the wing and then

[00:21:44] usually goes down to the sandy beach and clear for everybody, we give a confirmed status to an event as soon some of them 100% but it depends. But a lot of them want to promote the region and obviously the government or tourism funds chip in budget to run the event. And they are also laid with the payments to the organizer. So they don't free up

[00:24:23] their budgets that early and the organizer doesn't want It's kind of a good point to notice actually that this is also great tourism opportunities for those local governments and whatnot. So that is kind of cool. So we got 10 tour stops, any kind of highlights or favorite athletes and want to see that live and when the action is happening. But there is a lot of people that maybe don't look at live and rather look highlights or for tourism boards, it might be more interesting to produce TV content for mainstream media

[00:27:03] to get a lot of coverage in mainstream media where you're on other media outputs, let's say, of other media products if the live stream cannot be run on a certain quality. And you might have some destinations where you're lacking with intro window, we have hard time with internet because you're running on that.

[00:28:20] I mean, we have a starting system, we haven't set the light connection, all these things

[00:28:24] with us on every event.

[00:28:25] But this is not allowed in every country. livestream slalom drone footage is the way to go. You could do everything without any other camera and just use drone. One or two or three drones. But when you are in a wave competition or freestyle I don't think the drone footage has so much add-on value because you wouldn't see the, one of the classics, an event that's been on the tour since the first year. The Mont d'Alibor, it's a very famous water sports event within Europe that's existing for I think 25 event is going to be also eight days. So last year we had like one really good day and the rest of the days it was on the light side. So this year we extended the event period by two more days to give it a better chance of getting more strong wind days. And yeah,

[00:32:24] it's always a nice event to go. As I, which is also a classic. Being on the GWA, Wingful World Tour, Sydney's the first. Yeah, actually Taretha was the second event we ever did in the Wingful World Tour.

[00:33:41] But in 2020, we started in Brazil with is awesome. It's the south of Spain. There's a lot of parties, good food. Sunny days. That would be nice. So, yeah, a very, very popular place. I love to go myself a couple of times per year as well.

[00:35:03] So easy destinations to get to as overall.

[00:35:06] So if you're like at home and you. We're not trying to run events and shut off our athletes and they are up there doing their heat, they go back in the room and you'll now see them. Yeah, they love to socialize as well and everybody who wants to join an event is here to meet our athletes or the crew anytime.

[00:36:24] Happy to see you guys.

[00:36:25] Beautiful.

[00:36:26] So the next one we're looking at a GKA freestyle event as well, which means it's a bigger event and therefore also bigger budgets are needed. But it would be awesome. It would be the first time to bring the tour to Mexico. So let's see and keep our fingers crossed that we'll manage though. What kind of conditions can we expect from that place? It is a surf freestyle. So yeah, it's a it's a place that I would say has similar conditions to Teresa.

[00:37:45] Wind coming mainly from the other side, but it's a flat. And then last year we were not in Anseroten, we were in Grand Canary and in Fort Ventura, and this year it looks like we can do all three of them back to back, so we're taking that to the Canary Islands and then do one competition per week with a few days in between to travel and relax. So that's always an exciting leg.

[00:39:00] I mean Canary Islands, everybody that's been there knows,

[00:39:05] you go there in the summertime,

[00:39:07] it's just wind setup, you know. It's a cool place with, yeah, as I said, good community, lots of things happening around water sports. And we don't have on this event the weakest place on earth, but it's among the most windy places on this planet, especially at that time of the year. I would say 30, 35, 40 knots is happening on this cooperation and the special event last year in Grand Canaria was the the big air discipline where we used the devices of the Surfer app. Surfer app is a yeah it's there's not the only one but it's let's say a very easy to use

[00:44:04] Herbertum, like the founder, and then also Daniel. They're coming on the show, so they're gonna come

[00:44:06] and kind of give some information coming up as well

[00:44:10] as to what they're working on and expand that,

[00:44:13] because I know they got some cool stuff in dev right now,

[00:44:15] which we're gonna wait to share,

[00:44:17] but it's gonna be super fun to talk to that team

[00:44:19] and see how they're working with you guys.

[00:44:20] So that's good info for all of us at home

[00:44:24] who want to jump our two feet and our one feet.

[00:44:27] But you know what, we need, but there is some cool stuff coming down especially, but we're going to wait to hear it from them first. But okay, so you got some threes, you got surf freestyle, big air, and then free fly slalom is going to happen in Grand Canaria. So that's July 9th to 14th.

[00:45:40] It's also, I want to emphasize with that as know, that we were in Brazil last year, where now finally then we ran Sir Freestyle discipline in a lagoon in Cowipa,

[00:47:02] which is amazing.

[00:47:02] Oh yeah, we talked about that.

[00:47:04] Not bigger than the swimming wise, you know, you can see that a lot of the guys, you know, they're bringing their prototypes and they don't know. They are testing every heat, maybe different front wings, which would be more efficient on the Darwin swell or, you know,

[00:48:20] we're not focusing off what is not very out with orientated. We have some short upwind

[00:48:24] elements sometimes in it, but it's more just some tax. We're not really having elements I'm heading back there for a couple months and hopped on some brand new axis gear and Did like a 6k downwind or on their stuff and then we climbed all the way back up So we didn't want to walk so did like a 6 or 8k upwind and it took us an hour Did it from Brit there? she works with axis and just I could see it was my first time doing like a real official downwind er, right so I can see the

[00:49:42] That tie into free fly slalom because that was a it was tiring like my brain was maxed after a couple kilometers Obviously, it's easier on a bigger front wing, but a bigger front wing is slower. So you need to find the right balance of a fast front wing that is still doable to make the free-fly section without coming off the foil. And that's where we can see really different approach.

[00:51:00] You can see a couple of riders going really small, point break, even longer wave, but softer wave. So it's definitely easier wave than Ponte Preta, but a lot longer, I mean a lot longer,

[00:52:21] but let's say there will be a couple more turns.

[00:52:24] And it's just a costs, you extend a couple more days and be able to run both disciplines.

[00:53:45] And yeah, we were last in Sakarema and Sakareva.

[00:55:00] It was amazing, you know, it was amazing windy and wavy place in the south of Brazil so we're going all the way to the south and there have been competitions already in windsurfing and kite surfing in this place we're very much looking forward to this one as well. I think it's going to be a fun one too. And it's November is the season to be in Brazil.

[00:56:20] It always amazes me when you fly to Fortaleo, which is the main airport in Noggis in Brazil

[00:56:25] around October, November. Is there anything else you want to kind of touch on to introduce the year for for everybody at home? No, I think we lastly we introduced just two new disciplines a bigger in the wave discipline this year We continue with what we had last year. So but I think It was very successful last year and we were happy with what our things went down

[00:57:42] We also add a lot of parks were internally internally with and then they get counted together for the event result. But you don't know if it's going to be 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 or 10 or 15 animations. So you just run as long as you have. And so you never know if a final is happening, if it's going to be the last final.

[00:59:02] And we want to adopt that a little bit more into, but there will be some changes to that. And yeah, besides that, we're excited obviously about youth event. I mean, the young generation is pushing more and more and we see more and more young people

[01:00:23] getting into that. If you want to get into a free solid event, we have an app, it's called the GWA Writers app. So if you go on our website and you go to an event, click on the event page, you will have a button when the registration is open. We usually open the registration around eight to 10 weeks before the event. Registration is open for four weeks and close it four to six weeks before the event, pending

[01:01:42] a little bit of a vendor.

[01:01:45] And then the start list is selected. straight give you points to be chosen for wildcards for World Cup if you're entering, if you have a good result there. So it goes from continent or into World Cup and then there are also organized a wildcard. So each event has wildcards for the local organization that are meant to be for people from that country

[01:03:02] but it's up to the organizer to decide who he puts in. Like Cape Verde Wave event is a classic example. Anybody wants to compete there. It might be easier to get into another event in Brazil or in Darkler. And also these events are actually pretty popular, but just saying it is, it is also there we have long waiting lists. But you can try to get into some events,

[01:04:20] more easy, collect points,

[01:04:22] that will help you to get into the other ones.

[01:04:24] And yeah, feel free.

[01:04:27] I mean, don't be scared.