On the 26th April, Jean-Louis Philippe, also known as Loulou, manager of the shop and school Palmyre Wind in Palmyre west coast of France, suffered a very serious kitesurf accident… Apart from the human drama, safety quick releases have come very much under scrutiny as a result! A brief explanation is in order…
The accident…
That Saturday 26th April, the regular kitesurfers were at the spot in Palmyre, one of THE top kitesurf spots on the west coast… Wind 15 - 18 knots, steady and everything seemingly going smoothly on this beautiful afternoon.
Suddenly, the wind whips up from nowhere straight to 35 - 40 knots. No warning, no signs, big surprise for everyone present! The kitesurfers, 5 of them, were either on the beach (3 including Loulou) or already on the water (the other 2) and were all instantly in difficulty.
Being experienced kitesurfers they all decided the only option was, logically, to action their safety quick releases…
And that’s where the catastrophe turned into a real nightmare because for all 5 of the riders there not one quick release actually worked!!!
Without knowing the full details of each one, we do know today that for one of them his lines thankfully snapped, for another of them though it took 4 (yes 4!!!) people to get his wing released…
But for Loulou the whole thing ended in unhappy drama in the trees after a mad few minutes on the beach. He was seriously injured, the other 4 walking away unhurt by some miracle, if you can call such a bad thing a miracle…
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