CHRISTIAN MUELLER – EVENT ORGANISER
The history of competitions on lake Silvaplana started back in the seventies. In 1978 Nicolo Holinger founded the Engadin Surf Marathon and the first ever winner was Robby Naish. In the following years there were several competitions organized on the lake, like the Mistral World Championship in 1986 or the Jet Set PWA World Cup in 1994. Twenty years ago the event got a new name – Engadinwind. The event ethos is hosting the best windsurfers in the best possible windsurfing disciplines on the lake and having the legendary Engadin Surf Marathon always a part of Engadinwind. The ‘new’ event started with a PWA world cup and for the last 20 years we’ve hosted many top league windsurfing events in Silvaplana. As well as PWA world cups, we’ve organized world championships in freestyle, Euro cup racing and slalom, EFPT (European Freestyle Pro Tour) events and many Swiss championships and, very importantly, every single year we’ve organized one of the world’s oldest and still running windsurfing contests – the Engadin Surf Marathon.
In 2011 we created a new format called ‘Best of 3’. The simple idea behind it was to find out one thing: who is the fastest on the lake. Windsurfers, kiters and sailors competed against each other in three disciplines (slalom, racing and speed). Last year we had an epic 40th anniversary of the Engadin Surf Marathon. We invited all the winners from the last 40 years and almost all of them showed up. During the preparation of the event I was in contact with all of them and so many stories came up from the ‘good old glory years of windsurfing’. It was a very special moment to see them all competing together. From former world champions from the seventies to modern day PWA world cuppers, it was just amazing to watch all these heroes sail on lake Silvaplana. The highlight of Engadinwind 2018 (13-19 August) will be the FOIL MANIA event – windsurfing, kitesurfing and sailing only on foils and of course the EFPT freestyle tow-in only event, you can see the full schedule at www.engadinwind.ch