It’s a great achievement to make the podium at your first GKA World Cup! Talk us through how the event went for you and how it felt to be standing next to Bruna and Rita on the podium.
Thank you! As the event was my first GKA Freestyle event I did not have any expectations at all. I just wanted to give it my best and that’s exactly what I did. My first heat was against Bruna, which was already a dream come true as I have been looking up to her for many years, so I was really happy to land my tricks in the heat. In my second heat I also managed to land all my tricks and get a solid score and advanced into the semis. Here I struggled a lot with the conditions and crashed too many times, which caused me to be very nervous and stressed. However, I managed to keep it together and landed a good trick in the end, which secured me a place in the final. This was unbelievable and it felt unreal to be in a final with some of the best in the world that I have been looking up to over the years. So I was already super stoked about this achievement.
In the final, I had the best heat ever. I was super happy just to be there and therefore I relaxed and enjoyed it without any high expectations. I managed to land all my tricks and had my best performance in the entire comp. At first, I did not realise that I ended up third as I just focused on my riding and not the others girls’ performance. When I got back to the beach and was told the amazing news by my friends it just felt so unreal and unexpected. Then standing on the podium among the best kiters in the world was like a dream come true! It felt so surreal and I could not have imagined a better result at my first GKA Freestyle World Cup.
You won the GKA Youth Freestyle events for the last two years plus other national events. Did the experience help with the event in France, and was it a massive step up in the level of competition and the tricks you needed to achieve?
Competing in the GKA Youth events and other events over the last few years definitely helped to introduce me to competitive kiting and how to plan my heat and what tricks I needed to do. There is a big step up in the level from the Youth to the World Cup. I had to finish high school first before I could focus more on kiting so that’s what I did. Once I finished I spent just over two months training hard in order to get closer to the level of the pros and perform as well as possible during the comp. I did this by traveling in my converted van, first driving down to Sardinia where I spent 6 weeks and had good conditions to train freestyle every day and gain consistency in my riding. Afterwards I went to the south of France and explored the kite spots there before going north and on to Dunkerque to prepare for the comp. Traveling in my van allowed me to go where the best wind was and practice freestyle in all kinds of conditions. I was able to train not just on flat water, which proved to be an advantage in Dunkerque as I had trained in similar conditions to what we had during the comp.
