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- [00:00]
A
You have to perform straight away.
- [00:02]
B
We're concerned.
- [00:03]
A
I wish I knew.
- [00:04]
B
The answer is a bit controversial.
- [00:06]
A
He's going to be in 24 fleet.
- [00:08]
B
It was the biggest upset of that day.
- [00:10]
A
He won the Puckle event.
- [00:11]
B
Why do you think he's not there?
- [00:17]
A
Catastrophic equipment failure.
- [00:19]
B
Going for the boogaloo double just to get the landing. Oh.
- [00:23]
A
Had a couple of strings and it was extremely dangerous. Guys, I sent the trap and it is gold for Ellie Aldridge and gold for a Great Britain.
- [00:35]
B
Is Andrea okay?
- [00:39]
A
It's a very good question and I wish I knew the answer. Yeah, the tattoo, the 200 km an hour driving. I heard through the grapevine he lost a bunch of weight before this jump. Whether it was nerves or stress, I don't know, the optics don't look good, let's put it that way. What do you think?
- [01:00]
B
I think we need to hear from him and I think it's a shame we haven't yet. But what he is dealing with and experiencing is maybe far more important than coming onto a podcast about kiteboarding and telling the niche of the niche about it. So, yeah, the. If you missed it on Instagram stories, he arrived back in Italy from where he had been in Dubai to do this big stunt, which you will have seen, and, yeah, has got a new tattoo that is a tear that goes from the corner of his eye onto his neck. And at the bottom of that line is a. Is a bomb. And, yeah, I think that people are having such mixed experiences in the Middle east, aren't they? Here, some people are fine and other people are really not. So. And we're not really here to guess or speculate, but, yeah, we're concerned, I'd say absolutely.
- [02:14]
A
And I think you're right. It's difficult to speculate because everyone handles these situations differently. And I think, you know, we talked about the pressure of that jump, which must have been a. If you look at the videos, it's kind of terrifying. Then what happened the very next day. You just don't know, you know, and I don't want to say that, you know, some people are stronger mentally than others because, you know, we just don't know the makeup of everyone. But, yeah, look, my best wishes go out to Andrea and I really hope that, yeah, he can. He's okay. I really wish he's okay, you know, I hope he's okay. And. And the reason why we bring this up, Colin, is because the Lords of Tram fleet has just been named and I think he's a three time winner of the Lords of Tram I think he's got a Lords of Trap tattoo and, you know, this is a big event. It's the first event if he wants to win another world championship. And unfortunately, when it's only a two stop tour, we spoke about consistency being the key. You have to perform straight away. There's no, like, I'll take this one off, I might not ride this. I'll just look after myself. You know, right now he's in the fleet, he hasn't pulled out. I hope he's good to go and I hope we see the best of Andre and maybe he's going to pull something from this and be refocused. I don't know. I mean, I'm just trying to speculate here.
- [03:26]
B
How many messages have you had about Andrea from other people?
- [03:31]
A
Yeah, I woke up to maybe four or five screenshots of the tattoo with all with basically variations of what the fuck. I had some messages of concern, of course, like you probably did. And, you know, even Myra said on the last podcast, you know, I'm worried about this kid. So, yeah, I mean, definitely there's been an outpouring of, you know, it's not like, it's not like, what the fuck is he doing? It's more like, holy shit, is he okay?
- [04:04]
B
So you mentioned loads of tram fleet list is out. It is a bit controversial. There's a few names missing from there that should be there. There's a few names there that probably shouldn't be there. People are mixed about. All the big dogs are there, obviously, so there's no big hoo ha. But do you want to run us through the list?
- [04:23]
A
Yeah. On the men's side. Oh, let's start with the ladies first. So the ladies are Michael Luceau, Francesca Maney, Alice Ruggier, Sarah Siddiq, Pippa Van Ursul, Sara Hoogenraad, Natalie Lambreck, Lana Herman, Svenja, Zoe Peters, Alicia Minch, Aya Casabova and Lilou Zaglini. On the men's side, it's Lorenzo Casati, Andrea Principe, Leonardo Casati, Finn Flugel, Keem Overkirk, Shahar Sabri, Zach Adams, Steen Moore, Yosu San Ferreira, Timo Boasma, Jeremy Belando, Josh Gillet, Nathan Texia, Luca Ceruti, Jamie Overbeek, Jason van der Spee, Baptiste Jacquemin Elliot Bhutan, Martin Klobuchky, Cohen Van Dyke, Hugo Wiggersworth, Heel Vlute Clement Earl and Maxwell Dahl. Big fleets.
- [05:05]
B
Yeah, A couple headlines. Probably the biggest one is that heel is a wild card. Not a direct entry he's still in. Sure. But I think that is a bit strange.
- [05:19]
A
Yeah. I mean, traditionally wild cards are given to athletes that, you know, maybe have coming back from injury, who are ranked and natural performers. And you give these wild cards to give opportunities. But like I, I know far the time is undefeated, but if you gave the 24 selected men a piece of paper and said write your fleet down for this Lords of Trump event, he was going to be in 24 fleets. I mean, to put him as a, as a wild card is kind of crazy. But for years Lords of Tram have always picked a lot of French riders. They can pretty much do what they want on this. I don't think the GK has a lot of say outside of that. The 10 registered or the top 10 guys, which is the pre selected writers. So I think this is just part of, part of being in France. But I know Hill was pretty pissed off. I mean, I'm sure he spoke to you as well, but yeah, he was really pissed off. And Hugo's in that group, Clement's in that group, and obviously Mat Maxwell Dahl, who's a young kid coming out of Denmark who deserves to be a wild card. That's a, that's a classic wild card for me.
- [06:20]
B
Yeah. Cool. And what are the new names in the fleet? Who are the exciting newbies?
- [06:26]
A
I mean, I think Martin Kabushki and Maxwell Dull are sort of the two younger names. Both of them coming out of the world class kiteboarding academy. Great kids. Martin just changed to F1. Max riding on North. They've just been battling each other in Australia. They travel around the world, they do all these little local comps. But one thing I like about the Lords of him is that they do give a lot of opportunities for young riders. And I remember speaking to Max at the start of the year and I said, look man, your goal is to, to make some of these big fleets this year. So it's, it's great to see him doing it straight away. I think that's good for him. You know, it puts him in a position going to his sponsors back to north and mystic and say, hey, you know, I want to start being thought about for international team because at the moment he's still in the next gen team or the next gen program that I don't know how much that is active these days, but that's great to see. I mean, just speaking about the, the men's names, I think the big missing name for me is Parker Sage. Semifinal finish at the King of the Air. For him to miss out seems like a massive misstep. I would have thought his video would have been good proven performer but really really sad for Parker.
- [07:29]
B
I mean he beat Steno, he beat Steinmull at King of the year. It was the biggest upset of that day and he just kept hitting amazing kickers. And yeah the highlights of our interview on our Instagram because that was a major talking point. He's on a great kite as well. He's on a brainchild kite coming from Reading. He has Kevin Langley breathing down his neck which always seems to help. And yeah, he should be there. Why do you think he's not there?
- [08:03]
A
I don't know. Do you think there's a conspiracy between Reading and the gka? I don't know. It's difficult to know for me.
- [08:12]
B
He wants to be there though. We should know.
- [08:15]
A
I've been trying to get my hands on the reserve list. I have been reaching out trying to find the reserves first reserves but so far I haven't been able to get hold of that. And if he is in the reserves I'll find out the next before the next episode and let you guys know. I mean even if you look at the pre selected writers, right the pre selected riders going back Lorenzo Casadi, Andrea Principal, Leonardo Casadi, Finn Flugel didn't really do many Red Bull events last year but it's a ranked rider. Kim over Kirk, Shahar Sabri, Zach Adams, Steenmull, Yoshi San Ferreira who almost rode very little events last year but has the GK ranking points and Timo Boisma who was a semi final finish last year. So if you don't ride these events and you're not committed to them, you know it can come back to to catch you out. But if you're putting in videos and not getting selected for some other reason then that's a problem. So I'll look into that and find out. But I do know that Marius has written these events before and Marius is a read and writer so. So maybe there's nothing in that but it's definitely something something to think about because I think Parker has been hard done by here. The other one that I thought I might see and we haven't is Max Tallett. I really thought Max has written here a few years ago seems to be a little bit more excited about competition putting out some videos. I know he put in a video for that. I'm kind of disappointing that he didn't make that. He won the puckle event beating Elliot Bataan and beating Baptist Shakaman in the final There. So yeah, a little bit sad that Max is not there. I would love to see, you know, those guys getting opportunities regularly as well.
- [09:43]
B
Return a Baby Shark.
- [09:45]
A
Yeah, that's an interesting one, right? I mean Baby Shark's got a big announcement coming out the next few weeks. I had a great meeting with him the other day. Not even a meeting, just to catch up online, mate. I'm telling you, this was a very different person. Seemed like he's in a great headspace. He's working with a mental coach, he's into his fitness now. He wants to be back. He, he realizes that he messed up. You know, it was a little bit too soon, you know, too much too soon. You know, he didn't really get the support he probably needed in recent years. But I came out of this meeting and I messaged you Ben. I said man, I just had a great meeting with Baby Shark. It's like a completely different person. So I am excited to see what he's, he's going to do. He's in this event. I can't say what kites he going to be riding, but I'm not expecting a super great result from Baby Shark considering that he's been out of competition for some time. I think the last time he rode competition was probably Megaloop. Oh, Megaloop. Yeah, the last time he wrote Megaloop. But again, you saw him at Megaloop. I mean he was not in a good headspace. It was very, very clear that he wasn't really ready then or didn't give a shit or whatever. But he's met this new guy who's helping him out and man, I, I'm telling you, I like what I saw. I like the energy. It was a bit like Baby Shark when I first met him, you know, two or three years ago that sparkling his eye back and wanting to perform. So yeah, let's, let's see how he turns up.
- [11:12]
B
And what kites will he be on.
- [11:16]
A
It's not for me to say, dude. I think he's going to make announcement in a few weeks but he's off to Europe and he's going to get some training and yeah, he's, he's pretty excited. I mean I think he probably could work it out if you sat down and looked at the merry go round of writers. But uh, that's interesting. But I did see another rider, rider who's listed there on a new kite that hasn't, he hasn't announced which is Nathan Texia. He was on Duotone has left. I saw him Riding Elevate. So it's gonna be interesting to see how Nathan goes on Elevate. Let's talk about the pre select and the woman's. You've got Mika, Francesca, Alicia, Sara S and Pippa. Where do you see Micah? Is she going to come out and dominate this again? Because it's an event that she. You think she's got it?
- [11:55]
B
Yes. You'd be stupid to think otherwise. Even though she doesn't want it, she can still win it. She didn't want it any of the other times. Just came up and turned up and thrashed everyone. She's so good. She's so good. The doobie from last year, Micah's right foot forward, doobie kite unbelievably low. So much yank, free fall, craziness. Yeah. All she needs to do is what she did last year and she will win. And that was in a massive variety of conditions. There were some light wind days and then there was that absolutely nuclear day. It doesn't matter what happens, she can do it. What kite shall on will be interesting. Whether she stays on the 2023 D Lab Evo, which she's so comfortable on, or whether she changes to something else, something new, or maybe another Evo or. Or maybe the Rebel. But yeah, that'll be interesting to see, but epic to have Micah back in competition somewhere. She's always done really well. Yeah, I'm excited for her.
- [12:55]
A
I mean, the ladies is pretty solid, right? With Mica, Francesca, Alice, Sarah. That's Sara, Sadiq, Pippa, Zara, Natalie. I mean, look, the funny thing is Natalie, Sara and Lana. The three woman finalists from Red Bull King of the Air are in the video entry. Svenia, Alyssa I. Casabova, who's the young 15 year old coming through, and Lilu Ziglini, who's also ridden this event. Again, I really like this woman's. I think that's the best 12 that we have at the moment in women's big air. I'm really excited to see Pippa on the new kites. What she can do if that sort of give her a little bit of motivation to push harder there. I think, you know, Natalie and Zara, they, they've got their own little battle going back and forth with Francesca. Yeah, there's lots of exciting stories on that. You know, Alicia is a lady's always done well at this event because she can go right to the right, which is her dominant side. And yeah, exciting times on the ladies. I think this event is. It brings out the best of the ladies because it takes Out a lot of those kickers and all that stuff and, and lets them perform in, in these crazy conditions for sure.
- [13:58]
B
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think Pippa shouldn't be overlooked as well. She's a three time lord to tram winner. You're right on new kites, presumably comfier on these kites otherwise she wouldn't have moved. So yeah, she's one to watch too. And then you kind of can't ever write off Zara Hoogenrad or Natalie Lambert, can you? It'll be cool to watch Natalie now with some weight off her shoulders too after that King of the Air win. Yeah, she might be liberated from that. Or will it be like a king's curse we've seen multiple, multiple times now. So, yeah, all to play for.
- [14:33]
A
The good thing about the Lords of Tram, the venue is it really rewards fearless riding. And I think we saw that most importantly with Sara Siddiq last year, you know, when she came through and was like, hey, I'm going to throw some doubles down here and got rewarded for it and actually got through and got onto the podium, which is her first podium. But the person who that excites me the most is Lana. You know, Lana's always said, you give me the craziest wins and I'll put on a show. Lana's reckless, she's fearless. I think that this is the kind of spot that's going to really favor someone like Lana. Because guys, it's going to be windy. Look, I'm telling you now, they're not calling this unless it's going to be thermonuclear. So it's going to be who's fearless, who wants to do it. Right down to, you know, remember last year I Casabova, you know, her mum being so worried about the conditions and, and her as a 14 year old going out. So these women are, they're toug. This place rewards toughness and I think Lana can maybe get that breakthrough winner. She can really lay it down here if it gets crazy. Remember though, Mika doesn't like it when it's too crazy, brother. She doesn't like it when it's too crazy.
- [15:39]
B
Yeah, but she still makes it work better than anyone does. Yeah. And she's so good with risk. She knows when to push and she knows when to not. She's so smart.
- [15:51]
A
Yeah, that is true. Yeah. Those are all fair points. Yeah. I mean it's just like Mika. I just think with Mika, with that freestyle background, she just can stick the landing. She's so good on those landings. Every single time she can stick it. I mean, very rarely. I mean, I can't really remember Mika crashing so many times, but when she does crash, you know, she's just straight back into it. Yeah, I mean, with Mika it's just if she wants it enough, you know, that's what it comes down to. On the men's side, the pre selected Lorenzo Casadi, Andrea Principe, Leonardo Casadi, Finn Flugel, Kim over Kirk, Shahar Sabri, Zach Adams, Stino Steenmore, Yoshi San Ferreira and Timo Boasma. Last year, the, the three, the Timo Keemo and Steno, they, they, they wrote so well last year that the three O's I was calling them. I really want to see Finn. I really want to see more of Fin. I think, you know, we're speaking about Finn being the, the future. We hear the riders talking about it. We only really saw him last year in this and he. And he rode super well, but we want to see more of him and how dedicated is going to be to this big air. If he really wants to commit to big air. You know, he says he wants to do it all, but does he really want to do it? That's the key.
- [16:53]
B
Yeah, actually, that's such a good point. This is the first event that Finn's turning up to as a world champion in freestyle. Yes. But even so, also it will be the first time where he's been really talented as the next big thing. So all eyes will be on Finn Flugel.
- [17:12]
A
What about Shahar Sabri? Where do you see Shahar now? And is this an opportunity to cement himself as cause number one guy?
- [17:20]
B
I mean, it's him or heel, isn't it? I think, I think heel. We just never see his true potential because it's never absolutely honking for him. I think if it is, those two are neck and neck. I think they're both good at different things. So no, I don't think it is time if we get the normal Lords of Tram wind. Same with Mykonos though, which will be the second stop of this year's world tour. It can get nuclear there with it's been nuclear every time we've gone. They've got a tiny win window to operate on for that Mykonos event. I think it's five days, isn't it? So anything can happen there. That's really high risk. But yeah, it could be all time. That second event, how do you think
- [18:10]
A
Josh Gillett's mindset will be coming back to this place, considering last year he was here in the semi final and got completely knocked out and, you know, was face down in the water for some time. Is that something that he's going to be dwelling on or he's just going to be able to put that aside and get back to work?
- [18:25]
B
I think the latter. For someone like Josh, who's always been able to turn his brain off basically and just go, I think for his close friends and allies, it kind of will be in all of our minds. The 10, 15 seconds in which he was in that position was very precarious. And yeah, I know the likes of Jason van der Speyen, Luca Cerutti did not, did not find that easy. So yeah, I think Josh will be all right though, honestly.
- [18:57]
A
And one of the other young guys coming through, Maxwell Dahl. You've known Max for a few years, as have I. I think when we first met he was like a 13 on, on a banter boat trip with us. Super cool kid. Really filled out by the way, and become a bit of a man. How do people like Maxwell Dar and, and, and Martin Kuski approach event like this? Because this is a big step up. You know, they've been in, in full power fleets before, but this is a step up to the big time. This is like playing club footy and then getting your first opportunity in the big leagues. How do you think these guys approach it, being the youngest kids out there?
- [19:30]
B
It'll be interesting to see. I've never been around them at competition, but some kids like Andrea Pancipi and Lorenzo Casati just thrive under that pressure, didn't they? When they first turned up at King of the Air, we all thought they'd shit themselves and they didn't. They were just like, no, I'm really good and I'm just gonna do my thing and if that score is great. So I hope they can have that mindset going into it. Be interesting to see. Won't it be interesting to interview them on the spot and see how they are feeling. But yeah, ideally that's how they enter this. But it'd be very easy to not do that and to slide off the rails.
- [20:06]
A
Yeah, I mean, there's a couple of interesting stories. Like Stino, you know, he didn't have a great King of the Air, to be honest. I mean, to be honest, a terrible performance for Stino. Jamie Overbeat returning. Hasn't ridden since. Didn't. Hasn't ridden a competition since Cold Hawaii. Went out in the, in the semi there. Great to see how he goes. And Zach Adams, you know, we spoke before about Finding consistency. It's great to have good performances at the big events, but, you know, I think it's important to have good, solid performances across the board. So I'm sure people like Zach and Shahar and those guys are going to want to start putting regular performances down. They've been on the tour for a couple years now and it's. There's no more excuses, right? I mean, with, you know, with the Maxwells and the Martins, you can sort of give them a bit of a slide if they, if they trip up earlier or under pressure. But you think, especially Zach and Shahar, you know, those guys should be regular semifinalists now that, you know, they should be looking to. To be there, you know, competition and every single. They should be looking to be at that level every single competition. So it's going to be interesting. And the last one I want to ask you about is Hugo. Last time was here. He did that massive jump out the back. Very similar to the jump we saw from Marius a few weeks ago. Sort of blew himself out with adrenaline. Didn't perform. Did initially beat Lorenzo Casadi in his first heat of the day. So the. Actually the only person to beat Lorenzo Casadi. Well, one of the only two people to beat Lorenzo Casadi in a. In a heat all year. When it comes to twin tip, Jeremy Bellando being the other guy, what can we expect from Hugo? Is this some redemption after missing out of King of the Year?
- [21:32]
B
Yes. Similar situation to Jamie Overbeak, isn't it? They sat out on the sidelines. Hugo flew there as well, same with Jamie and sat out. So, yeah, really good opportunity for him to shine, isn't it? And, yeah, that's a crazy statistic. Only one of two people to take Lorenzo Casati out last year. That is mad.
- [21:54]
A
And that other person being obviously Jeremy Bellando. Interestingly, this is Jeremy's first time back to this event in a couple years. He didn't ride it last year. Didn't do that. Didn't do the. Didn't do the GKA Tour. Went in through the video again. I think Jeremy had a pretty, you know, maybe didn't have the best King of the Year and he was pretty disappointed. A couple of events, especially the Megaloop, he won called Hawaii. He's on that new V2 kite. He's super happy with it. I would like to see Jeremy step up. He was the 2024 world champion. I mean, we've got the last three world champions, Andrea, Lorenzo and Jeremy. It's kind of crazy that those three Italians that we've been speaking out for so long. Are, are the last three world champions. I, I'm, I'm expecting big from big things from Jeremy. I want to see him get back into, you know, being included in that group all the time. Not just every now and then being that group all the time.
- [22:45]
B
You mentioned Jeremy's kite there. That's the one that's coming out in April. Have you spoken to the designer? Have you got stuff from him?
- [22:53]
A
Yeah, I did. You know, we, I put up some of, you know, I spoke if you listen to last podcast where you heard from Jeremy Bland on that. But Eddie Conrad got back to me and he was saying that, you know, in the normal rounds they do three rounds of prototypes and there's a lot of prototypes in that. But this was tested with nine rounds of prototype finishing at Cold Hawaii, which was a real sort of accomplishment for that team between him and Jeremy because Jeremy got the win on it. But he, he also went back and said, you know, the, the new, that they increased the speed on the 10-14s. Increasing the speed, but he made it smoother loops through the seven to nine sizes, which just gives more confidence. And he said, look, it all comes down to that seven point bridle system. He said, that's the real winner that unlocked that V2. And they, they're really proud of that, that new bridle setup. And Eddie and, and Jeremy had been working on that for a long time. So, you know, they, they were patient. They just didn't do an annual release. They held back, they worked on it, I mean, testing to get that one right. So, yeah, it's going to be super interesting to see in flat water too. Which is going to be interesting.
- [23:54]
B
No, no, it is the strength. People thought it wasn't as good in, in waves and that's what they've. No, in waves, it's not as good in flat water is strong.
- [24:04]
A
Yeah, I know he's really proud of it. You know, I tagged him on Instagram the other day and he was like, oh, that's awesome. So, yeah, these guys are really proud of that kite and it's great to see young riders getting in and working hard with designers. And I really like Jeremy's approach to it because he, I think he gets the brief right. You know, everything Jeremy said, he said all these changes, guys, it still feels like that great, solid kite. You know, that's what the market wants to hear. They don't want to hear it's going to be too fast for you or too slow for you. He said it's got that great. It's still a great feeling, Kite. And I think that's what the market wants to hear.
- [24:37]
B
You know, it's what I want to hear. I just hope they don't tweak it too much because I really liked it. Anyway, let's hear from them more in the lead up to the. To the launch. We actually don't even have the launch date. It just says early April. Yeah, my end. So. But yeah, we'll bring you. Let's on that. All right. I think that's probably enough for this episode. Anything else to cover?
- [25:01]
A
I think that's it, dude. Guys, I'm still gonna try and get Andre. I don't want to keep. I'm not going to promise anyone, but I am gently moving forward to get him on the podcast and talk about the jump and just see how he is. So, yeah, lots of cool, exciting interviews coming up on kite to 365. I've got a Nick Jacobson interview coming up. I've got Lewis Kren interview coming up. All super cool stuff. So, yeah, lots of. Lots of awesome stuff coming up on the podcast.
- [25:23]
B
All right, thank you as always. We'll see you in the next one. Goodbye.