Bjorn about One Hour Classic

The One Hour Classic was a great event. We were pretty lucky with the conditions, even if normally you don’t need to be any lucky in Garda! I mean: friday was rainy with thunderstorms, while saturday and Sunday we had sunshine and beautiful weather.

The event was limited to 100 riders and was overbooked, with not a single place left, that shows that everybody wants to compete. There were a lot of young kids, a lot of young boys, a lot of young girls and all the ages as well, so that was really cool to see with the mix between the Pros of the World Cup and also the amateurs from the area and a great mix of big nice smiles. On and off the water, which is very important as well.

Garda Lake is very important for central Europe and Windsurfing in general and Circolo Surf Torbole, that is so always busy, proves what I believe: that windsurfing is growing and is going to be big again, so all this helps that, support that, and makes Garda what it used to be in windsurfing, the heart of Central European windsurfers.

My race went pretty well, I had a great start, unfortunately the wind picked up too much, so my choice of the equipment that was good with the light air since I was on the Modena 138 and the 9.4 with the 48 cm fin. The 138 was perfect, but a 8.6 and a 46 cm fin would be better! So the wind was strong and I was overpowered from the start for most of the way. I was setting around 11th, 12th, 14th position the all time, but unfortunately right before the finish line there was a big hole of wind and I stop planing and a ten of people took me the last hundred meters! But that’s part of Garda and of the race: sometimes it happens to you and sometimes to the others!

My plans, after being on AV-Boards, is definitely to come back and support One Hour Classic for next year again, and so I told the organizers that they can already sign me up! I’m ready and hopefully we can have another great experience, even if a better spirit than this year which is hard to beat! But I’m sure that if everybody will come back with this great spirit, this can happens!

So keep the spirit up! Go windsurfing, bring your kids to windsurfing centers and this way we’ll have more people enjoying the competitions next years!
See you then! Ciao!