If you can't laugh at yourself, you miss half the jokes in life. That's more or less how I explain the incident in this picture. But honestly, I can only smile at the pictures. With a reasonable amount of driving skill and attention, the probability of crashing into an obvious obstacle is pretty low. So how could this happen?
Starting the slalom at the pin end, i.e. furthest downwind, has the advantage that you are closest to the first gybe buoy. This means that those who start upwind can sail downwind, but must completely overtake the leeward starters in order to be the first to enter the jibe. Consequently, this is a favourite position for starters with good timing. And here's the catch: if you don't start perfectly at the pin end, you quickly find yourself in the downwind of the others and quickly fall far behind.
Disaster and perfection close together
In this case, at the IFCA Slalom European Championships on Lake Garda, many riders travelled to the start line early, which means that as a downwind starter you are forced to keep up in order to avoid getting caught in the downwind before the start. When it became apparent that we might arrive at the line too early, I tried to extend my route to the start line with snaking lines. I briefly entertained the idea of passing the start line downwind, which can be a nasty move in PWA competitions to provoke your opponents into an early start and save yourself by not crossing the start line.
At the last moment, however, I realised that this is not an option in IFCA competitions, as the races here - unlike in the PWA - are not restarted in the event of a false start. During the last sharp turn into the wind to cross the line after all, the wing of the foil came out of the water - stall! The board fell off the foil and my course changed abruptly from "just over the start line" to "full steam ahead to the GPS start buoy".
In short: better timing at the start would have saved me a smashed board nose and a last place in this race. Starting a few tenths of a second later might have made the radius of the last turn smaller and therefore possible. Sometimes disaster and perfection are just so close together!
