Nuking Nortada

Who can possibly forget the iconic images of racers screaming round buoys in breaking surf in windsurfing’s heyday! Since then, slalom has become a little tamer due to world cup events in surf locations often having a wave event taking priority when the surf is up, or it simply being too dangerous to lay a course! All that changed in Portugal at that the inaugural Viana World Cup as racers dodged waves, each other and took to the skies, voluntarily or involuntarily, in some of the most extreme slalom dogfights in modern times. John Carter assembles a collection of windsurfing’s finest to look back at a thrilling event and finds out how the riders coped with racing in the nuking ‘Nortada’ winds of Cabedelo Beach at Viana do Castelo, North Portugal.

- John Carter, Ben Proffitt, Matteo Iachino, Antoine Albeau, Pierre Mortefon, Andrea Rosati, Ross Williams, Sarah-Quita Offringa, Maciek Rutkowski, Arnon Dagan

MATTEO IACHINO

The event was amazing. It is the best event I have ever raced at since starting the PWA tour. I won, but also the conditions were off the scale. We raced a lot on 5.5m sails. It was wavy and mega windy and not so choppy. It was just incredible fun. It was by far the best conditions ever. The waves gave a whole new dimension; they made the racing more difficult, but with the challenge of extreme wind it was high-speed racing at its best. I love this because you could play on the course, come back and gain positions. This is proper racing. I was just focussed to race well in every single heat. I have trained for high winds in Tenerife; I love racing like this, and I think one of the keys is that you must like the conditions. The passion I have for windsurfing is for this type of racing. I just concentrated on my performance race by race. When we had the waves it was kind of dangerous, but we are professional windsurfers so we need to race in the best and most extreme conditions. Maybe we need to race sometimes when normal guys cannot even make it out. This is the core of our sport, so it was great that the race director put the buoy in the waves…we need more events like this!

BEN PROFFITT