Sunday, September 11, 2011

11-city tour Final day

Today we had the final day of the 220 km 11-city tour.

With Paul Jackson and Casper Steinfach both 13 minutes behind me, I only had one challenger for the 1st overall; Ryan James who managed to stay with me every day and was only 4 second behind me in the ranking after my drama under bridge during the final minutes yesterday.
Ryan is also my team mate using the same board STARBOARD Ace 14' and a nice guy too.

It was windy again strong and directly in our face.
I started fast but realized it was to windy to do it all by myself if the rest was going to work together. So they caught up and we worked together until the break, working hard against the head wind. The last 4 days I did a lot of work on the front today I wanted to play save and the top 4 equally shared the work load. It is nice to be in front to control the pace and avoid escapes but on windy days it costs a lot of energy.
After the break we were 7 racers left over and the pace went up. 4 km before the finish we got a little wake from a dingy and we all wanted to use it, so this started the sprint to the finish. I had made sure I was close to the front. We paddled hard all the way to the finish dropping one after the other. In the end it Casper was in front of me and Ryan James behind me at a save distance. For my only Ryan's position was important, playing it save and taking no risk.
Casper managed to get into 3rd position overall and making 35 second good on Paul Jackson who got 4th.

Day 5
1st Casper
2nd Bart
3rd Ryan

Overall
men
1st Bart de Zwart 24 57 min hrs STARBOARD
2nd Ryan James 10sec STARBOARD
3rd Casper Steinfach 12min Naish

women
1st Anne-Marie Reichman
2nd Angie Jackson
3rd

Many thanks to the fastest board company STARBOARD for my ACE14'

also Black Project for the fastest fins
DAKINE for the best waterpacks and clothing
and CONTOUR for the great action cameras














Many Starboards at the start in Leeuwarden



The winning board STARBOARD ACE 14'







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