What's so appealing about the cheese roll?
The rotation. It's aggressive and exciting. First you're lying on the sail, then the wind flips you to the other side, it leverages your stomach until you finally fall off and land. And then there are the crazy perspectives.
Prospects?
Yes, you tilt the sail back and look up at the mast. A crazy picture. Then the sail flips and you're hanging upside down in the air. Finally, you fall towards the water. And it all happens quite slowly. You see it all - it's only possible on the Cheese Roll.
When you stunned the windsurfing world with the first forward rotation in 1986, everyone wondered: How did this unknown European come up with the idea for such a manoeuvre? How, Cesare?
Back then, I raced my first competitions on Maui. I was only 17, came from Italy and wasn't taken seriously by the judges. That bothered me because I was good. I was a multiple Italian champion and had mastered all the freestyle manoeuvres of the time. But I kept losing in Hawaii.
Forward rotations did not yet exist in windsurfing
What was your plan?
I needed a banger move. Something that would knock everyone's socks off. Back then, the only jump manoeuvres available were tabletops and the backloop, which had just been invented and was difficult to land. Forward rotations were unknown in windsurfing. But in all acrobatic sports there is a forward rotation. And it's usually the forward rotations that are particularly sensational. So I thought about a forward rotation.
Well, theory and practice are two different things.
I also had to realise this at Diamond Head in the summer of 1986. Jumping up and throwing yourself forwards - it wasn't that easy.
What happened?
I knew that I would have to jump high. So high that the mast could swing freely without drilling into the water. So at the apex of a high jump, I threw myself forwards towards the nose of the board and opened the sail. Of course I crashed. Today we know that you can do anything but open the sail. From today's perspective, it was an attempt at a stalled end-over-forward with the wrong technique. This kamikaze act almost killed me.
A crash by Robby Naish as inspiration
On the face instead of a super move.
For the time being, because then I saw Robby Naish in a surf video. He had to let go of his equipment in the air. The wind flipped the board and sail through the air - in a forward rotation to the side. "Ah, that's it!" I thought. It was possible after all!
Then came the Aloha Classic.
Not yet. In autumn 1986, I flew to Maui because the Maui Grand Prix was taking place beforehand. And again I was rated poorly. Now I still had ten days until the Aloha Classic. That was the waveriding competition with the highest prestige.
Ten days to invent the most spectacular manoeuvre in windsurfing.
Yes, that wasn't much time. What's more, nobody was allowed to watch me do it. I wanted to keep the manoeuvre a secret until the competition. Only then would it be a sensation. A move that would shock everyone - the entire Hawaii elite.
It's no easy feat to train on Maui without being noticed.
That's right. I had met Mickey Eskimo at Lake Garda. He knew a suitable spot - called Babybeach.
What did you have in mind?
I wanted to rotate to the side and let the wind help me turn, just as Robby Naish's material had flown through the air. I jumped off, pushed the sail down, the wind flipped me to the other side and I fell into the water with a big splash. But the rotation had worked. Eskimo was completely over the moon.
Everyone wondered: Where did the Italian suddenly come up with this trick?"
Mike Eskimo used the Cheese Roll for marketing
And then the competition began.
The Aloha Classic got off to a difficult start as huge waves rolled into the bay. During a cheese roll, I was brutally lifted into the air. Spectacular photos of this later appeared in the American windsurfing magazine. My plan worked. The windsurfing world was shocked. Everyone asked themselves: How was that possible? Where did the Italian suddenly come up with this trick?
The Cheese Roll has also helped Eskimo enormously.
He was the second person after me to roll forwards. Eskimo was a marketing expert. He knew all the photographers, had contacts with the magazines and staged himself with the help of the Cheese Roll. Photos of him doing the cheese roll went around the world, because the media were keen to see the new perspectives made possible by the forward roll.
How long did it take for the competition to start rolling forwards?
That was a matter of a few weeks. After the Aloha Classic, everyone started to rotate. And not only that, because if you try something and it goes wrong, sometimes it turns into something else, something completely new.
A forward loop, for example.
My move was the beginning of a new era in windsurfing. The cheese roll was the first so-called trigger move. An aggressive rotation that was followed by many more, because the cheese roll tore down mental barriers and showed what was possible. That's right, the front loop was the direct result of the cheese roll.
The front loop pushed the cheese roll into the shadows
The cheese roll became the chicken roll, and the forward loop was the super move that everyone wanted to be able to do. It's a shame that the cheese roll quickly acquired a strange image, isn't it?
The cheese roll is more technical than the front loop. And the movement is much nicer because the rotation is slower and the landing softer.
Cheese Roll - a strange name for such a ground-breaking, spectacular jump."
So why the bad image? Was it perhaps because of the name? Cheese roll?
The Cheese Roll initially had a completely different name: Killer Loop. Mickey Eskimo gave it that name.
Wasn't the end-over-front loop called a killer loop?
That only happened later. At first, my move was the killer loop. Immediately after the Aloha Classic, I flew to South Africa. On the plane was one of the Aloha Classic judges, Terry Wey, who later became President of the PBA. He was thinking about the marketing aspect of the new manoeuvre. He thought that Killerloop sounded too American, too exaggerated. Together with windsurfer Dana Dawes, he made puns, first Cesare Roll and then Cheese Roll.
And you thought that was good?
Oh, I didn't really care. Why not Cheese Roll. But I agree with you, it was actually a strange name for such a ground-breaking, spectacular jump that heralded a whole new era in wave riding.
When was the last time you jumped the cheese roll?
In 2016, I sponsored the Aloha Classic with I-99 NoveNove. That year, the Cheese Roll turned 30 years old. For a story, I surfed Babybeach like it was 1986 and jumped Cheese Rolls.
