Citroën Windsurf World Cup Sylt 2026: Freestyle on the way to the final – Lennart Neubauer shows off a new combo

It may well have been the only chance to hold a freestyle event here at the 2026 Citroën Windsurf World Cup Sylt. As the forecast for the rest of the week looks rather unpromising, the race committee did everything in its power to go ahead with the single elimination today. Although the offshore easterly wind was still marginal near the beach, it was significantly better further out. As soon as the wind picked up around midday, the first heats got underway. Lennart Neubauer, the World Championship leader and Sylt winner for the past three years, was one of the first to head out, check the conditions and signal to the judges: “It’s fine, let’s get going!”.

Lennart then had to wait a little longer for his first appearance; first, he had to get through the first round. Arne Jörn, the only German freestyler and a relatively last-minute addition to the line-up on Sylt, and had drawn a tough opponent in Sam Esteve. “The conditions were the complete opposite of what I’d expected,” Arne said later. “I was a bit underpowered on a 5.2, but I wouldn’t have wanted to ride a 5.6 either. I didn’t land all my moves, but it was great to have competed in a World Cup heat!”

In the second round, the round of 16, the other top riders also got in on the action. Dieter van der Eyken, Jacopo Testa, Takumi Moriya and Yentel Caers all went full throttle right from the start and also broke the 30-point mark. Balz Müller and Steven van Broekhoven also progressed; the contest between Youp Schmit and Takuma Sugi was particularly thrilling, as the Japanese rider took the lead by just 0.52 points shortly before the end.

Caers knocked out in the quarter-finals – a decisive moment in the World Cup?

Lennart Neubauer then took to the stage in the final round of the last 16 – and what a performance: he immediately set a new high score of over 37 points and didn’t give the Italian, Cosmo Pezetti, a chance. In the quarter-finals, Dieter van der Eyken knocked out Jacopo Testa in the first heat; despite the Belgian’s lightning start, Testa managed to close the gap to just under three points. Things then got even tighter: Yentel Caers, the reigning world champion, initially built up a solid lead against Takumi Moriya, but the Japanese player fought his way back. In the final two minutes of the heat, the lead changed hands several times, with the gap remaining razor-thin, until Moriya sealed the deal with a last-minute kabikuchi. With Caers out, Lennart Neubauer had taken a big step towards his second world title. A major surprise as early as the quarter-finals!

Lennart Neubauer performs the first Shaka into Shaka

After Balz Müller had sent Steven van Broeckhoven back to the beach, Lennart Neubauer also progressed to the next round with a comfortable lead over Takuma Sugi. Shortly before the end of the heat, he treated the judges to a ‘Shaka into Shaka’ – a new combo that was awarded over seven points!

From round one right through to the quarter-finals, the judges were able to run the heats like clockwork, even though the transition periods in between had to be slightly longer to fit the drones with new batteries. But by the time the first semi-final came around, the wind had died down. Dieter van der Eyken’s heat against Takumi Moriya – the mentor and coach against his protégé – was halted twice, after which the contest area was spontaneously moved southwards in the hope of finding better conditions there. There, in marginal conditions, van der Eyken was able to celebrate his place in the final before the second semi-final had to be called off again. That’s it – no winner of the single elimination today, and no World Championship decision either. The hope is that at least the last remaining heats might still be held on Wednesday.

All heats and results can be found at pwaworldtour.com