The two long-established GFB members Leon Struppeck and Loris Vietoris from Kiel stepped in for organiser Valentin Böckler this time and put together the absolutely spontaneous contest in Orth within one day. Many thanks to both of them for their commitment.
With the exception of a small breeze at midday at the start of the second round, everything went wonderfully and we managed to complete a full outward and return round.
This light-heartedness despite the competition and the exuberant atmosphere on land and on the water make the GFBs so unique. Many of the twenty riders were simply happy to see each other again and go surfing together. But that didn't affect the performance on the water at all. Quite the opposite: the level was higher than ever before. From the very first round, it was raining power moves on the Orther Reede. Some of them seem to have had plenty of time to hone their new manoeuvres over the past year. On the one hand, there were familiar faces, such as Mathias Genkel, who has been competing for more than ten years now and regularly catapults himself onto the podium with consistent, double-sided power moves - and on the other, newcomers such as Ole Wurmdobler from Heiligenhafen, who rode his first battle and made it straight into the top 10.
Freestyle is very versatile. Five knots more or less wind can make a huge difference. The approach, the style and the type of manoeuvres then change completely in one fell swoop. And that's exactly what we experienced in this battle - during a wind chop around midday. The entire team was faced with an internal conflict when the conditions were suddenly no longer "perfect", but the competition organisers allowed the second round to continue. The basic principle of the freestyle battles is that you only ride at top spots with clearly sufficient wind. This was no longer the case around midday and we asked ourselves whether we just wanted everyone to have fun or whether we wanted to see who was the best today - regardless of the conditions.
It was suddenly about having a repertoire of manoeuvres in stock, even in less wind and with pumping. Or, like Magnus Wessel, to fill his score sheet with different tactics, namely with a large sail and double-sided spin loops. Magnus fought his way up to ninth place with a strong effort. Fortunately, shortly after a vote among the riders - in which it was decided to continue, but to repeat two heats - the wind picked up again.
The race could therefore continue in good conditions - what a day!
Judging is now done on tablet computers with their own judging app - still by drivers. It works really well. Valentin Böckler has put a lot of work into this recently and had the app developed together with GFB partners. You just type in the move, rate it from one to five and the system spits out the final score. It's really professional and makes judging much easier than before.
In principle, the judges are always changing, but at some point there is usually a small group of three to four participants who have already been eliminated and are out of the Neo. At best, this well-established group then judges one heat after the other up to and including the finals. That's where it often gets really tight and you have to be able to type quickly, as so many moves are jumped in succession. With our Swiss guest competitor Jeremy Plüss from Lake Biel, it was really close at times. For example against David Weissensteiner or Leon Struppeck. But nobody made life easy for him, not even team-mate Luca Hartmann from Gettorf, who has perfected his power moves such as the skopu and burner and ended up sharing seventh place with Hendric Gutacker.
Jeremy won lap after lap until he met Niclas Nebelung in the final. Niclas rode extremely solid heats all day at absolute World Cup level and didn't let anything burn in the final either. He secured first place ahead of Jeremy Plüss in second and myself in third.
The two German freestyle girls, Elena Dominick and Lina Schmied, had to decide the battle between themselves this time, as their competitors are currently in the south of France and were therefore unable to compete spontaneously. In the end, Elena won the exciting duel with sliding and classic manoeuvres. Freestyle is also in good hands with the ladies, with such motivated girls, and we are already looking forward to the next time when the rest of the competition will be back.
It was probably the first and last GFB of this season, but we are already looking forward to 2022.
Thanks to the organisers, to everyone who took part and to Adi Beholz, who brought this great format to life on his own initiative over ten years ago.
Men:
1st Niclas Nebelung
2. Jeremy Plüss
3rd Julian Wiemar
4th Mathias Genkel
5th Leon Struppeck
6th David Weissensteiner
7th Luca Hartmann
7th Hendric Gutacker
9th Sebastian Dietrich
9th Ole Wurmdobler
9th Magnus Wessel
9th Roman Handke
13th Loris Vietoris
13th Kevin Langbehn
13th Quirin Kraus
13th Nils Martens
17th Julian Hohenstein
17th Niklas Dost
17th Simon Ponseti
17th Janus Wilke
Women:
1st Elena Dominick
2nd Lina Schmied
Julian Wiemar
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