Olympic superstars from past and present met the future stars of windsurfing in Medemblik today. Gold medalist Stephan van den Berg ( Los Angeles 1984 ) and Dorian van Rijsselberghe (London 2012)[more] enjoyed the friendly atmosphere, signed a lot of autographs and made sure followers are on the right path.
16 year old Xanthe Bowater (pictured with Dorian) reported back to her native New Zealand “The racing has been really good, a bit of every wind condition. We have had between 2 and 20 knots in the past 3 days from 3 different directions.” Regarding the split into gold and silver groups: “I unfortunately just missed the cut by 3 places so am in the silver fleet now. Even though I am a little disappointed in this, I will now look forward to the possibility of leading the fleet.”
She also said: “It has been an interesting time for some of the smaller more isolated countries like New Zealand, you come to an event like this as the top in your country – you feel you are sailing well and I know I have come a long way from Worlds last year, but we line up with the big teams from Europe – the Israelis, Polish, English these teams all have large well resourced national programs that send teams, coaches etc. I don’t think it is all about the resources but more about the numbers and the opportunity that these sailors get to sail against really good kids in big fleets all the time, they are awesome.”
“So what this means to me is that if i want to succeed in this, I have to try really hard to make sure I take every opportunity to sail and train with bigger fleets and get to these regattas when I can.”
