The Official
Website of the
International
Sailing Federation

The windless weekend unfortunately meant the wave contest could not be completed, leaving the women without an official result and eight men in joint first place at the Nivea World Cup Sylt. In random order Sylt's best wave sailing men are Greg ALLAWAY (AUS), Victor FERNANDEZ (ESP), Nik BAKER (GBR), Vidar JENSEN (NOR), SEADI, Alex MUSSOLINI (ESP), Robby SWIFT (GBR) and Peter VOLWATER (NED).

SEADI commented, 'For me this is the ultimate goal. To become World Champion depends on so many things and the level of the competition is so high. You have to have the right equipment, the right technique and lots of support,' as the fresh 2005 wave champion explained. 'This year it finally all came together for me. To achieve all that in Brazil is pretty hard, since windsurfing is very small there. But I've always had confidence I could do it and a lot of support from people to whom I own a great deal of this title. I did the sailing, but without them I would probably not have been able to do it.'

The overall women's champion Daida MORENO celebrates © PWA/Carter

With no counting result on waves here in Sylt, MORENO landed her sixth world wave title. 'I've been coming here since '97 and it's almost always been windy here, so it's a shame we didn't get to finish the wave performance this year,' Moreno commented on her title. 'I will try to keep winning of course in the years to come, but the level of the other girls is rising really fast now, so it will become more difficult every year. For me, my goal is to keep improving myself and helping the other girls in the process.'

In the Slalom 42 event it was a close battle, but in the end Bjorn DUNKERBECK (ESP) managed to stay ahead of Micah BUZIANIS (USA) and Antoine ALBEAU (FRA). This means an unprecedented situation occurs, as DUNKERBECK and BUZIANIS share their first place in the final overall world rankings.

'This has never happened before,' World Slalom 42 Champion DUNKERBECK explained. 'In the past there were regulations that ruled out this occurrence. A multi-discipline event would count more than a single discipline event or the winner of the last event would be the champion, but all these rules have now changed. So it's a bit strange, but I'm still happy about winning.'

While this victory means an amazing 34th world title for DUNKERBECK, it is his first on in Slalom 42 as it is a brand new discipline. He is sharing it with BUZIANIS who commented on his path to the top in Sylt, 'Bjorn started off very strong, taking four bullets on the first day. I pretty much thought I had lost it right there and then, but then I had some good heats and on the last day I did pretty well. In the last final it was all or nothing, so I went for it at the start and it paid off. Luckily for me, Antoine didn't have a very good race and it was enough for me to take the title together with Bjorn. It's a little weird, but since we're both on the same team, it's really a great team victory as well.'

So that is it for the Nivea World Cup Sylt 2005 and the 2005 PWA world tour. All results and pictures can be found on www.pwaworldtour.com. The riders will now scatter all over the world again looking for the best conditions to train their hardest to take on each other next season, as no doubt the level will be cranked up another notch over the winter break. The way things are looking now the first showdown of 2006 will be the London Boat Show, where the PWA fleet goes all out indoor style.