It was as if the stake had been pulled out from under the pile of wood - everything suddenly started to "roll". Time: November 1986, scene of the crime: Hookipa, Maui/Hawaii. The 17-year-old Italian Cesare Cantagalli stunned the international windsurfing scene at the Aloha Classic with the first forward loop. To be more precise: Cantagalli jumped a forward roll around the mast's longitudinal axis, a move that would later go down in the history books of windsurfing as the cheese roll. The cheese roll sent the world of windsurfing into a frenzy like no other move before it.
Windsurfing superstar Pete Cabrinha remembers: "Cesare jumped the first forward rolls in the competition. I watched it from the beach and could hardly believe what I was seeing - the jump looked crazy!"
The cheese roll explained step by step
Suddenly you were hanging over the material instead of under it
Until then, the aerial manoeuvres in windsurfing were simple and straightforward: there were high jumps, there were long jumps, there were steep jumps (so-called upside-downs). And more recently backloop attempts, which had surprisingly little to do with a loop. In the early days, the "backloops" were more like horizontal 180s jumped into the wind, which usually ended in a fall. In other words, they were all moves where you hung under the rig and sailed through the air quite passively. Mark Angulo, one of the new schoolers in the wave at the end of the 1980s, summarised: "Previously, we always hung under the sail, even when backlooping. And now? Above the material!"
Yes, Cesare Cantagalli's forward roll was completely different to all the aerial tricks before: this jump was characterised by a previously unknown dynamic. The surfer threw himself over the sail and pulled the outhaul through the wind as he rolled forwards. This resulted in an abrupt rotation. The wind now hit the sail from the other side and flipped man and material through the air. This caused the surfer to hang upside down in the air and twist around the vertical axis.
The cheese roll has made windsurfing more acrobatic
"When I saw the cheese roll for the first time, it was like a shock. At first you don't realise anything," said Austrian speed surfer Michi Pucher, who was training in the wave on Maui at the time. Scene hero Mickey Eskimo wrote in a letter (emails didn't exist yet!) to surf in November 1986: "Loop addiction on Maui! Cesare is responsible for this!" Today Eskimo says: "Looking back, you have to realise that the cheese roll made windsurfing much more acrobatic. This side-to-side rotation was simply 'magic' and not difficult at all - but that's always easy to say when you have someone to show you how, like Cesare Cantagalli. But we had no idea at the time what effect the cheese roll would have on the sport. We were living in the moment too much for that."
The killer loop became the cheese roll
"From sailing to acrobatic flying," commented scene photographer Sunstar on the event of the first forward roll and immediately provided an explanation: "It's not for nothing that the somersault is called a killer loop." Cesare Cantagalli's forward roll was indeed called a killer loop at first. The Hawaiian by choice Mickey Eskimo was responsible for this. Eskimo had trained the forward roll together with Cantagalli in secret. "For Mickey, everything that was cool was killer back then: killer wind, killer pasta, killer girls," says Cantagalli. "When he saw the first attempt at my forward roll, Eskimo knew it was a killer loop".
Months later, US windsurfer Dana Dawes gave the forward roll the at best cute-sounding name "cheese roll", and only the vertical front loop flips that emerged from the cheese roll were still referred to as killer loops. These flips over the masthead took their toll in the spring of 1987: Mike Walze broke his collarbone, Eskimo his hand, Angulo his ankle, others shredded their eardrums and smashed their noses on the boom - the killer loop stole the show from the cheese roll.
The Euros stole the show from the US surfers
"I started jumping rolls right after the Aloha Classic," says Pete Cabrinha, "and not just me, but all of us. If you wanted to win competitions, you had to perform rolls and loops from then on." The US surfers in particular, who were playing at being locals on Maui with exaggerated "Hawaiian patriotism", felt their honour had been insulted. After all, another "Euro" had turned up and schooled the Hawaii elite with a new manoeuvre. "The humiliation was deep," recalls Mickey Eskimo. Eskimo came from Vienna, was constantly inventing new manoeuvres, moved to Maui early on and now landed on the front pages of magazines again with the cheese roll. "The fact that we Euros took the butter off the Americans' bread didn't sit well with the 'Maui locals'.
After the Aloha Classic, everyone threw themselves forwards - spurred on by Cantagalli's forward roll. This led to unexpected variations of the manoeuvre. I saw Matt Schweitzer roll over in the air and do a complete somersault - the front loop was born," says Eskimo. But it was during the super session of the 1986 Aloha Classic that 18-year-old Dave Kalama wanted to save the honour of the US windsurfers (allegedly he had watched Cantagalli at the secret training spot) - Kalama managed the first front loop turned over the sail top.
Robby Seeger jumped the first German Cheese Roll in Heidkate
"The front loop was the result of the cheese roll hysteria that the whole pro camp got into after the Aloha Classic in 1986," says ex-worldcupper Robby Seeger, who was just starting out in his career. "I saw the pictures back then and thought to myself: it can't be that difficult. Close your back hand, stretch your front hand, turn your shoulder in." Seeger was the first German to jump the cheese roll. Wolfgang Block, journalist and photographer for SURFEN magazine, asked Seeger if he could do the cheese roll? "Sure, I can do it," I told him and then threw myself forwards into the Cheese Roll in Heidkate on the Baltic Sea. Of course I slapped my back like a cockroach, but that didn't matter. The pictures looked spectacular and appeared in SURFEN."
The trade magazines seemed irritated by the looping around the various axes and often confused the rotations. It didn't take long for the Cheese Roll to be somewhat marginalised. Whether it was the daft name or the even more spectacular rotation of the end-over-front loops, suddenly it had to be the front loop. "You can't lure a tired dog out of the oven with the Cheese Roll - as a crack of the world, you put on a front loop show," read surf, which reported on the loop development in every issue in 1987. Sigi Hofmann summarised in SURFEN 1987: "Professional surfing in the wave has increased by 100 percent towards madness." Debbie Brown was the first woman to attempt the loop and also triggered the "Salto Mortale" hype among professional women.
The cheese roll is the "gentler" front loop - with a good view
In 1990, Cesare Cantagalli jumped the double cheese roll, and the double front loop was not long in coming. "The cheese roll was the beginning. Everything that followed built on it. The cheese roll movement can also be found in the goiter or in the pushloop, which is basically a reverse cheese roll," says Robby Seeger, who fuelled the evolution of tricks for many years. The front loop jumped over the top, which was a special expression of courage and determination in the early days, developed into the "modern" front loop - it was more like a horizontal "downwind 360" than a real somersault. Because the killer loop was a brutal affair - too brutal for man and material. "When I learnt the front loop, I broke boards in rows. I couldn't manage to turn sideways - with the result that I slammed the board flat on the water," recalls windsurfing pro Zdenek Maryzko from Tarifa, "The guy who kept mending my boards said to me: learn the cheese roll, because the landing is soft. No sooner said than done. I realised that not only is the landing smoother with the cheese roll, but the rotation is also nicer because it's slower. You get everything, you can even look towards the beach in the air!"
The Cheese Roll was the beginning. Everything that followed built on it. The cheese roll movement can also be found in the goiter or in the pushloop, which is basically a reverse cheese roll."
In the years that followed, a two-tier society emerged: the front loop divided windsurfers into two camps like no other manoeuvre - namely those who jumped the front loop or at least had already tried it, and those who didn't dare. It didn't matter whether it was the cheese roll or the "real" front loop - the main thing was to rotate forwards. This created a strange performance dictate that gave our favourite hobby a questionable hierarchy - to this day. And it all started when Cesare Cantagalli wanted to show everyone with a super move. Or as Pete Cabrinha put it: "Cesare will always be the guy who invented the forward loop."
Robby Naish and co. on the cheese roll
