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Kitesurf Worldcup in Silvaplana

The BMC Worldtour was in Silvaplana from August 10 - 19. The event was heald during mostly nice weather with light to moderate winds. The freestyle competition was spectacular as Flash Austin beat Martin Vari in a super-tight semifinal, whereas Mauricio Abreu beat Chris Gilbert (the winner of the last event in Fuerte). Unfortunately Mauricio hurt his knee in the semifinal, so he could not compete against Flash in the final. Therefore Flash won the first round without having to race against Mauricio. The winner of the first round was automatically seeded in the final of the double-elimination.
Within the double-elimination round, all riders got a second chance to advance into the final and to compete against Flash.
We could see some insane action and terrific jumps in this round. The heat was especially on during the semifinal between Chris Gilbert and Martin Vari - the leading man in the overall standings of the worldtour in freestyle. The decision was once again superclose, but Chris managed to beat Martin with higher jumps and mostly perfect landings.
So it all came down to the final between Chris Gilbert and Marcus "Flash" Austin, who obviously recovered from injuries he suffered in Leucate previously this year. In this final Chris showed that he is capable of doing huge jumps even in light wind conditions whereas Flash impressed with perfect tricks and superb handling of his directional board. Again, the decision of the judges was close, and the winner finally was Flash Austin - congrats !

Incident during Kitesurf Worldcup

There was an incident during the second round of the double-elimination. Local rider Hans Würgler crashed near the beach and got unlucky as his kite powered up again and pulled him over the rocks and into the fence. He was fortunate not to get seriously hurt - according to my information he suffered minor injuries on his head and neck. The safety precautions of the event however need to be improved, as there was no medical doctor present and since it took over half an hour (!) for an ambulance to arrive. Hopefully everybody learned his lessons out of this incident.