TEAM
Our freestyle team is amazing right now and I am very happy. The freestyle sail is pretty much the only sail in the line that I can’t really test well by myself. My freestyle skills are a little archaic so it’s hard to feel how the sail really works in the high end moves they are doing. I still like to actually sail the protos a lot and try to understand them, but in terms of the finer details it’s really hard as my double air culos are not really up to scratch. Therefore I really rely on the team a lot, and I am really happy with all the guys we have. Jacopo is obviously a key member of that team and has a big input, but the guy that works the hardest on this is Loick Spicher. He is a really good freestyler, but also really good at testing and giving excellent feedback. He has kind of acted as the test team coordinator, taking all the information from the guys and translating their feedback into useful information. Often the hardest thing is actually to translate what the guys feel into real information. Sometimes it’s very hard to communicate specific feelings, and even more so when it’s not in your mother tongue. Loick is firstly very good at that, and secondly speaks about 6 languages, so that really helps when discussing things with the others. On top of him and Jacopo we also have Tonky Frans, who is a legend and has a huge wealth of knowledge and also Francesco Cappuzo who is a bigger build than the others and therefore gives really useful feedback on other points in the sails. Finally our windsurf marketing manager, Matteo Guazzoni, is also an amazing freestyler, being ex- EFPT champion himself, so he also has a big input, often with a more general point of view. All the guys are super picky which I love. As a designer I love that the riders are pushing for perfection. It is much better like this than if they just say everything is great.
This year I was really proud of all the team. I think all the other disciplines of the sport I am still actively competing in so it’s a slightly different view on the team. With the freestyle I have not been competitive at it for 10 years or so, so I look at it and it feels really different. Somehow I feel like an elder advisor over the team, rather than one of the guys. Slightly less with Tonky as we competed together for years in the beginning, but certainly with the other guys I am constantly checking their heats and scores and watching more closely than with anything else. For sure I like to follow Alex Mussolini when he is doing well, but it’s really different with the freestyle team somehow. Jacopo stole the show this year and really it was only Gollito that he couldn’t beat. Even Amado he beat in the EFPT, so he really showed he is one of the top top guys. I really wanted Tonky to do well this year as he was sailing better than ever but I think he was pretty unlucky. He had 1 or 2 heats this year that were so close and he lost by nothing on a couple of dubious decisions. If a couple of things had gone the other way he could easily have been right up there also fighting for the podiums. Loick also stepped up his game and Francesco really shone in Sylt. He is an incredible talent, and a real all-round waterman, the Italian Kai Lenny.. ha ha ha. He is 2 x Italian windsurf wave champion, 3 x Italian kitesurf wave vice champ and this year in Sylt he finished 7th in the Freestyle. If you see him, his build is not the typical freestyler’s build as he weighs around 90 kgs, but you see him on the water and he is like a ballerina, but with huge explosive power when he needs it. He is really young still and it will be interesting to see how he develops.