Portugal, Matosinhos, Thursday 8th August 2004


The wind plaid with our patience till the end of the week ... That is definitely an unusual situation for a summer in Portugal and especially in Matosinhos ! We checked numerous weather forecasts on Saturday and all of them predicted a depression with strong wind from 7am to 10am in the morning ... That is why the race director programmed the skippers meeting at 5.30am ! "premiere" in the KPWT history...

It was still dark and night when we arrived on the beach. A strange and, in a way, exciting atmosphere ! With only 3 hours of wind planned , the promoter decided to change the format of the men competition in order to have enough time to complete a round. On the women side, the situation was different ; we only had two heats to run to complete the winner bracket.



The Frenchies Jaujou, Deleau, Fernandez, De la Villemarque, Auriol, Coste, Le Bourgocq and Mariani made their way to the second round quite easily as well as the Portugese Rui Pedro, Martins and Lufinha. The Champion of Morocco Soufiane Hamaini, "sun of the desert" passed a few good jumps and also went through to the heat n°4. In the final, the local Rui Pedro Meira really stood out and won with talent in front of the two "kids" coming up : Mallory De La Villemarque and Adrien Jaujou.

1. Rui Pedro Meira (POR) 5 500$
2. Mallory De La Villemarque (SPA) 3 600$
3. Adrien Jaujou (FRA) 3 000$

On the women side, we managed to run the double elimination. Gisela Pulido, the winner of the Jim Beam Kiteboard World Cup in Turkey, recovered from her bad result in the winner bracket and got into the final in front of Fabienne D’Ortoli. The expertise of Fabienne, 2001 & 2002 KPWT World Champion made the difference.

1. Fabienne D’Ortoli (FRA) 3 000$
2. Gisela Pulido (SPA) 2 000$
3. Hélène Barrière (FRA) 1 000$

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