The GWA Wingfoil World Cup Tarifa | Day One

Wednesday 12th October, 2022.
Words: Gemma Hamaini
Photos: Samuel Cardenas

The GWA are delighted to be back in Tarifa for the penultimate wingfoil event of the 2022 season, where 48 men and 15 women have registered to participate in this  pure Surf-Freestyle event. The forecast looks very promising for the coming days, and the levante wind will certainly allow the GWA athletes to put on a show for the Tarifa Wing Pro. 

The competition today commenced with women’s rounds 1 to 3, followed by half of men’s round 1. 

“We will be judging a pure freestyle format for this event,” explained Head Judge Mallory de la Villemarqué. “We are looking for technical tricks, to be performed with good height and amplitude. We want to see good speed entering and exiting the tricks. Clean landings will also be an extremely important part of the scoring.”

Check out all the video highlights from Day One

Women’s Eliminations

Women’s rounds 1 to 3 were first in sequence, where the wind was blowing around 15 to 18 knots. The women performed consistently well throughout each round, with all of the top seeds surviving unscathed and advancing to the quarter finals. They performed a solid variety of tricks including front and backside 3’s, raleys, toe-side frontside 3’s and air gybes. Tomorrow we will continue with the quarter finals, and the close run for the 2022 World Title between Paula Novotna and Nia Suardiez could possibly come to an end, if Paula Novotna were to win here in Tarifa. This would automatically make her our 2022 World Champion, but if Nia Suardiez were to win here, then it would all come down to the final event of the year in Brazil next month. 

The most impressive female performance of the day was from our current leader, Paula Novotna, who has been training in Tarifa for several weeks already, and her hard work seems to have paid off. She achieved an overall heat score of 27.23 points which was substantially higher than the rest of the female fleet today.

The line up for tomorrow’s quarter finals are as follows:

Christina Koenig vs Flora Artzner

Isabel Triviño vs Nia Suardiaz

Manuela Jungo vs Bowien van der Linden

Maria Barro vs Paula Novotna

Men’s Eliminations

One big contender missing from this event is Balz Muller, who is unfortunately not here due to a recent injury he sustained. This opens the door to other athletes to advance further up the ladder and grab his current 2nd place position in the general rankings.

The new generation of wingfoilers were hitting hard today, racking up some impressive scores to get the competition started. Malo Guenole was definitely in fine form, and his frontflip scored him 8.40 points. Another young gun, Chris Mac Donald was unstoppable during his heat, with his frontside 7 scoring an impressive 9 points, the highest score of the day. 

The winners of each heat advanced directly to Round 3, and the other two competitors will receive a second chance in Round 2.

The wind dropped at 6pm, making heat 8 the final one of the day. The action will continue ON Thursday!

We still have three more days of action ahead of us, so be sure to follow all of the regular updates from the GWA Wingfoil World Cup Tarifa.  

Follow all of the live scoring and live ladders from the GWA Wingfoil World Cup Tarifa here. 

The Instagram stories are packed! Facebook has been firing. Subscribe to our YouTube channel to receive the all-important video highlights from this and every event this season.