LANZAROTE
What is of equal importance for training in our heavily conditions dependent sport is of course the location. Lanzarote has proven to offer a great variety of sailing and is a new spot for most of us on the slalom circuit. My good friend and fellow team rider Kurosh Kiani has actually chosen Lanzarote as his home base and is the person mainly responsible for bringing the training here. I asked Kurosh to tell us more about ‘his’ island – “While most people have been on Tenerife, training during the off-season, I’ve slowly set up camp on the beautiful island of Lanzarote. Mainly because it has been the island in the Canaries where I’ve felt most “at home”, even though for the first year I had the local spots pretty much to myself! However what’s most important for me personally is that since I have moved to Lanzarote, I have seen a spike in my windsurfing performance. I see the main reason for that to be the fact that I was able to sail pretty much every day and in a greater variety of conditions then ever before.
Besides windsurfing, Lanzarote is actually already famous for hosting big scale sporting events such as the yearly Ironman. Thus, when I eventually introduced the idea of the training camp to the local community, there was only thumbs-up and great support, which for me indicated that we were on the right path! Eventually I was approached by Andrea and Mark to investigate the opportunities. I was glad that we were able to establish the camp in a way that allowed us to be able to move around to different spots depending on which conditions we liked to sail in and combine this with facilities for physical training. The main idea behind the camp in is to establish a foundation where we are able to train like real athletes. This training camp has been for anyone who is serious about raising their level. Lanzarote was chosen first of all because of its diversity in wind and water conditions and because of its infrastructure already suited for sports activities.”