GKA News:
GKA Air Games Cabarete 2018 - Riders on the Storm on Day 1
Women’s tour leader, 13 year-old Mikaili Sol focusing in at this morning’s skippers meeting
The main event window officially opened yesterday as the last remnants of a dramatic tropical storm that had raged through the night blew out to sea. Thankfully, the thunder and lightning ceased by mid-morning but the turbulent weather wasn’t going anywhere and Cabarete’s natural cross-on wind direction was skewed, with the wind blowing a little more side-offshore than usual.
Couple that with the residual clouds that were stopping a thermal effect from building and it meant that the wind never quite hit full competition strength but, if you had a big kite, it was ‘go time’ all the same and a number of the riders were out warming up on their bigger kite sizes throughout the day.
Variable conditions are a fact of life in competitive kiteboarding, and they don’t just pose a challenge for the riders either. We caught up with race director Sergio Cantagalli to get a bit of background on the conditions we can expect this week (spoiler alert: the forecast looks solid!) and tour manager Tom Hartmaan alongside head judge Mallory de la Villemarque who gave us some insight into the concept behind this exciting new World Tour.