Monday 23th February 
Location: Newcastle, UK
Words: Kate Chandler

There have been some changes to the structure of the elimination process in competitions for both the Kite-Surf and Freestyle disciplines.

The tour begins next weekend with GKA Kite-Surf World Cup Cape Verde, but before the competition starts, have you heard about the changes to the elimination process, and what the judges are looking for on the water in 2020? 

There have been some changes to the structure of the elimination process, there will no longer be qualifiers for events, and the new Dingle elimination process will make competing more equitable for each rider.

The elimination ladder for 2020 has a new adapted Dingle. We’ve used Dingles in the past but this year instead of doing qualifiers we’ve decided to add 2 rounds that will replace the qualifiers. 

These rounds are not officially Qualifiers, but as the TOP 16 + 2 GKA wildcards are already pre-seeded in round three the new riders, or lower ranked riders have to battle to reach round 3 in order to compete against the big names. These rounds are not too difficult, in that only one rider out of the three loses on round 1, and second placed riders get a second chance to make it to round 3 in round 2. This is the only difference compared to the dingle ladder used in 2019. 

In addition to those pre-seeded 18 riders, two local wildcards, 10 new riders will be able to join in the action on any world tour event. This does make it more difficult to enter an event and new riders will need to prove that they have the level to be able to compete on a world tour event. 

Within the new 10 riders the GKA give priority not only to riders with a good ranking from previous years, but also riders who have kite merits, or who show that they have a really high level of riding. For instance, the athlete Filipe Fereira has not competed in the last two years but has a very high level was given a spot on the event of Cape Verde starting next week.

What do the judges want to see on the water in 2020?

What do the judges want to see on the water to score big points on the 2020 tour? We caught up with GKA judge Javo Santangelo and asked him what exactly it is that the judges want to see on the water in the Freestyle discipline and head judge Mallory de la Villemarque, to give us the lowdown on what the judges are looking for in the Kite-Surf discipline.