Speed surfing: Lüderitz Speed Challenge 2023 - will the world record be broken this year?
Tobias Frauen
· 08.11.2023
November means Black Friday, lantern parades - and speed windsurfing! As every year, the Lüderitz Speed Challenge, the event with the greatest chance of setting new records, will also take place in 2023. The ultimate goal is the world record, but national records and personal bests also regularly tumble in the Namibian desert.
Antoine Albeau, world record holder since 2015 with 53.27 knots, is already on site. He wants to set a new record after the end of his PWA career and has been working on optimising his equipment and sailing technique for some time as part of the Zephir project. On his first day on the canal, the Frenchman immediately topped the rankings with an average speed of 47.05 knots over 500 metres - despite only a "light wind" of around 40 knots.
Antoine Albeau's first run
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Behind him after the first sessions is Gunnar Asmussen with 46.53 knots, followed by Thomas Modenhauer with 43.73. Melek Toraman is the only woman on site in Lüderitz so far, her best value is 40.8 knots. Björn Dunkerbeck, whose big goal is the 100 km/h mark, is still recovering from an infection. World record holder Heidi Ulrich and Vincent Valkenaers from Belgium are also not travelling to Lüderitz this year, according to an Instagram post.
The runs on the Lüderitz canal also count towards the third and final phase of the Dunkerbeck Speed Challenge 2023, with Hand Kreisel, Melek Toraman, Nicolas Goyard and Brendan Lorho leading their classes at the halfway point of the event period.
Last year, the women made a name for themselves at the Lüderitz Speed Challenge: Switzerland's Heidi Ulrich set the pace with an outstanding47.16 knots set a new world record, and Melek Toraman from Sylt improved the German women's record to45.37 Knots. Vincent Valkenaers, on the other hand, narrowly missed out on the men's title with 53.08 knots. World record by Antoine Albeau .
This is the speed channel of Lüderitz
According to the drivers, the canal in Lüderitz should be better than ever this year. If the conditions are right, new records are a realistic possibility. Every year, the speed strip near the village of Lüderitz, around 1200 kilometres north of Cape Town on the Atlantic coast of Namibia, is dredged anew. It is located directly in a bay near Point Diaz, where the offshore wind is accelerated between mountain slopes and can blow across a plain at full force towards the sea. The channel is laid out at an optimum angle to the main wind direction, and a barrier of sandbags ensures that the water surface is as smooth as possible. At the ends, there is a start and acceleration zone as well as a run-out zone - but all only around half a metre deep.
