Day 2 at the EFE unfortunately didn’t see any wind, yet a day packed with alternative program for the riders and the specators.
After the skippers meeting at 10.00 in the morning a training session with the coach of Adrien Bosson (North/Fanatic) has been organised. Many riders got involved in the power-hour outdoors. Silvain motivated the group to give everything in the long warm-up run over the beach and the team-challenge afterwards. With a parcours consisting of shuttle-runs, dragging car-tyres and stand up paddling the theme was ‘all out’ for the participants. Everybody seemed to have a huge amount of fun and there have been requests already to do this every morning from now on.
Julian Mas in the shuttle run
With 24 riders registering for the tow-in competition today, the fleet was split up into two qualification groups one starting at 12.00am, one at 4.00pm. The riders were given two runs with the better one counting. The top five of each group would pass on into the big final on Saturday with 2.000€ prize-money.
Besides the riders who usually enter the tow-in and are always up for a good challenge, we were really happy to see a high involvement of young riders like Riccardo Marca (North/Fanatic), Thomsen Jannes (Sailloft/Patrik) and Sam Esteve (JP/Neilpryde). The sailors showed a decent performance for their first tow-in competition and even landed funnells and burners.
In the first round some tow-in specialists like Amado Vrieswijk (Starboard), Mattia Fabrizi (North/Fanatic), team-mate Adrien Bosson and Nicolas Akgazciyan were fighting for the tickets to the final. Vrieswijk and Fabrizi could convince the judges with two clean culos with a super dry landing. The best five of this fleet got completed by Yentel Caers (North/Fanatic) from Belgium with a perfect double funnell, Adrien Bosson with a burner-funnell and Gabriele Varrucciu (Naish/Naish). The Italian couldn’t quite get it together in the training yesterday, yet landed a planing flaka-diablo (discussion have been going on if it has been a ‘meev’ even) with a big bang. The riders on the beach went wild as this has not been seen in tow-in before and Gabriele claimed his move with a huge smile. From the first group, also Jacopo Testa (RRD/RRD) deserves to be mentioned, as he is usually not somebody to enter this discipline. He could impress with a clean one-handed funnell, even if it wasn’t enough to go through to the final.
Adrien Bosson in front of the event area
When the sun got lower and the beach and the pier were filling up with more and more people, the second fleet was sent out including many big names and therefor contenders for the final like Steven Van Broeckhoven (JP/Neilpryde), Vladimir Yakovlev (JP/Neilpryde), Julien Mas, Romain Pinocheau (F2) who was already on the tow-in podium of the EFE in 2012 as well as Adam Sims (Sailloft/Patrik) who constantly gets into EFPT tow-in finals. Therefor it wasn’t very surprising that those five riders could make it through. An impressive performance was shown by Van Broeckhoven who landed a funnell-burner in his first and a flaka-shaka into flaka in his second run. He has been leading the fleet all the way, yet also Yakovlev from Russia impressed with a planing one-handed burner. Pinocheau did a triple funnell in the training but could only pull a really nice double funnell in the competition, leaving the French spectators cheering on the beach. Well big was the move of tow-in show-master Julian Mas who did one of the best and cleanest triple funnells ever seen in competition. Apart from the five finalists, also Riccardo Marca and Matteo Romeo (RRD/RRD) from Italy deserve to be named here. Both riders were participating in their first international tow-in event ever and could stick really decent moves like a funnell (Marca) and a spock (Romeo).
Adam Sims qualifies
The final tomorrow is scheduled for 4.00 pm and we still keep on praying for wind on Sunday. If you want more insights on what is happening at the beach of Six Fours les Plages make sure to follow us on our social media channels!
European Freestyle Expression 2014_podcast #1 from Open Ocean Media on Vimeo.