“Excited and nervous for where the progression of windsurfing is going.” - Jaeger Stone, 22 July 2018, Pozo Izquierdo, Gran Canaria.
July was a good time to be a sports fan, a confluence of major sporting events made for an interesting background to view our own sport against. Mainstream sports have a stable base level which they currently operate under, there’s rarely any seismic breakthroughs in performance, unless you’re a cyclist with a ‘good’ doctor or ‘special’ blood. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t drama, Wimbledon wouldn’t be Wimbledon without the oohs and ahhs as balls just make it into play and the World Cup wouldn’t be the World Cup without the dreaded penalties, nor would a Grand Prix be a Grand Prix without crashes. The scripts are unwritten, but essentially balls and cars move around as they have done for quite some time. Nothing wrong with that. The pathways into these sports are well established; to learn tennis hit a ball against a wall, football – kick a ball into a wall, motor racing – have a large trust fund and don’t crash into a wall. Mainstream sports are mainstream for a reason, they’re normal and things don’t change, generally. There may be a scandal every now and again, or weekly if it’s athletics, swimming, cycling or any other of the ‘dope’ sports, but by and large what you see with these sports is what you get. Windsurfing isn’t like that, thank goodness.
This year’s PWA wave event at Pozo displayed a level of performance that was unrecognisable from even just a year ago. Jumps teetered on the edge of insanity, the risks were beyond comprehension and even the sailors themselves had a hard time processing just how far the level of our sport was raised. It was beautiful to watch. It was scary to watch. It was nothing like a mainstream sport.
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