After a three-year break, the European Freestyle Pro Tour was brought back to the beaches of Lefkada by Christos Stratos who is the local organiser and owner of the Milos Beach Resort. Being a passionate windsurfer himself it was just a matter of time that the urge of getting some of the best freestyle windsurfers of Europe won over the motivation of the Greek to organise the Milos Beach Lefkada Freestyle Open for the 5th time.

Steven Van Broeckhoven (JP/Neilpryde) in training today

With a very short notice and late announcement of the event in March the pre-registration list didn’t exceed the amount of 13 international riders. In the end we registered eleven riders, with no Greek involvement which is rather disappointing. Looking at the fleet though, attending riders had to admit that there won’t be any easy heats. The starting list extends from four times European Champion and former World Champion Steven Van Broeckhoven (JP/Neilpryde) and his team-mate Yentel Caers, top ten PWA freestyler from France Adrien Bosson (North/Fanatic), Hugo Sousa from Brasil as well as UK top riders Max Rowe (North/Fanatic) and Adam Sims (Sailloft/Patrik). The fleet of eleven is completed by Rick Jendrusch (Severne/F2) from Holland, Loick Spicher (Starboard/North) from Switzerland, Jamie Howard (Jp/Neilpryde) from the UK, Vladimir Iakovlev (JP/Neilpryde) from Russia and Christos Loizou (North/Fanatic) from Cyprus who had his EFPT debut in 2014.

Christos Loizou with a funnell

Throughout the early afternoon the thermial wind increased more and more which left riders and the crew excited. After very unusual weather conditions yesterday though, with an over head high shore-break and strong onshore winds that made it hard, to nearly impossible to launch at Milos beach, the port-police stopped the anticipation by declaring the beach not safe enough for an official competition stating that no rescue-boat could launch or land at the shore. Although organisation and the EFPT crew was pushing for it to happen due to the very good forecast for today, it was unable to take place. There was no other way than calling it a day, hoping for a better outcome for tomorrow and sending the riders out to the water for a training session, accompanied by the local photo and video team.

The skippers meeting tomorrow is schedulded for 12.00am, as the forecast looks more promising in the afternoon as usual.