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Winners and Losers | Cold Hawaii | The Megapod
00:36:09
On today's episode, Colin and Adrian talk winners and losers after one of the craziest kiteboarding events of all time. Cold Hawaii again delivered another event to be remembered. Cold Hawaii – Post Show: WOO Trade Up:...
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- [00:00]
A
Eight times that the leader of the heat changed.
- [00:03]
B
It was wind, rain, sun. It was every single combination of weather you could face.
- [00:07]
A
We're staying in a hotel called the Pancake House.
- [00:10]
B
Yippee.
- [00:12]
A
And this repeatedly happened until all the cameras were broken.
- [00:16]
B
And that was just the magnitude of that one.
- [00:17]
A
The best heat of the year.
- [00:19]
B
I don't know what he has to do different. He just has to keep trying, I guess. Catastrophic equipment failure.
- [00:27]
A
Going for the boogie loop double just to get the landing. Had a couple of strings and it was extremely dangerous. Guys, I sent the trap and it.
- [00:36]
B
Is gold for Ellie Aldridge and gold for Gray Britain. All right, Colin, it's two days after one of the craziest kite boarding events I've ever been to. How are you feeling, mate?
- [00:50]
A
Pretty depleted otherwise, as I record here from my humble Airbnb twin room in. In Fairman, Germany. We've made it to the the island of Core.
- [01:05]
B
How's Fehmarn? I've never been there before.
- [01:08]
A
Well, we only arrived late last night and we were staying in a hotel called the Pancake House. And the. Let me tell you, Adrian, the variety. The variety of food on offer is you. It's pancakes or nothing.
- [01:26]
B
Well, it is the Pancake House. I mean, it's not pancakes and everything else, it's just the Pancake House.
- [01:32]
A
Yeah, maybe we are the stupid ones. Actually.
- [01:35]
B
Let's get to the winners and losers and I want to start with the loser, Colin. My mic cables and mics, when you fly with them in chicken baggage, you always get pulled over when you're taking three phallic, like, objects through the scanner, you know, and a bunch of cables. And the guy was like, yeah, come over here and let me have a look through this. And I was like, okay, cool, you know, open it up. He opened up the drawers from my bag. There was so much sand in there. He looked into it and thought, too much sand. He just pulled it close, put it in my bag and off we went. So I don't know if those cables are ever going to be the same again. And they're only outside for about half an hour, so respect to everyone who stood out there all day in that weather.
- [02:10]
A
Yeah. The biggest losers of the day was the cameramen. I think presumably they were men, maybe camera women, camera people. They just had a bit of a rough time of it, what with their camera box being the furthest down the pier and therefore the first to be struck by an incoming wave. Apparently the wave found its way through a door, sloshed. So I shouldn't laugh. It was pretty expensive mistake. Sloshed into the cabin, went, you know, went past the camera people's legs, found its way to the end of thus cabin, sloshed up against the end of the cabin and then return. It was like the return of something. It's a return of a bad Jedi. Came and just sloshed them once again from. From the other side. And this repeatedly happened until all the cameras were broken. And the spirit of the camera people as well.
- [03:10]
B
Yeah, I mean, hence why by the end of it, we were only looking from one poor cameraman who was forced to stand up in the wind and film. So, yeah, that bit disappointing. We lost to those camera angles early. I mean, also the judges towers, another loser. They also got swamped and had to put the event on hold and then reconvene in another area, which again, was getting battered by. Battered by the waves. And lucky we finished earlier. I think if we'd gone any longer, I think they would have had to shift again because it was almost like those windows were going to smash out with the amount of seawater hitting them.
- [03:41]
A
Our commentary booth was fine, though, guys. Don't worry about it. We were fine.
- [03:47]
B
Every now and then, open the window just to let some fresh air in there, and, you know, the people would eagerly be looking up. It was like I didn't even feel bad, actually. I didn't feel bad at all. I was just smiling, going, hell's it out there. And they were freezing. But I think the crowd that turned up was. Was one of the big winners. I mean, fair play to those guys because they brave some crazy conditions. And not just wind. It was wind, rain, sun. It was every single combination of whether you could face.
- [04:14]
A
But what were they rewarded with? Perhaps the best heat of the year in Heel versus Lorenzo and a final that was so closely fought with banging tricks all through the day, it was sick.
- [04:29]
B
Yeah, Unbelievable. I'm kind of annoyed that I didn't get to see the final with my eyes. I think that would have been better. You know, we. We missed a lot of stuff, but, you know, that was just the situation that we were dealing with. We were obviously trying to tell the story with what you were seeing. Two amazing heats. I mean, for me, the Heel versus Lorenzo got us up, got us on our feet in the booth there, and, you know, it just brought so much energy, and that was just the magnitude of that one. Pretty rare to. To see a heat like that. And again, when I think back to Hill's career, he's had these heartbreak moments. Amazing heat I think back to the loss against Liam, to the loss against Andrea. He's always in these heats, unfortunately, he's always on the losing end. I don't know what he has to do different. He just has to keep trying, I guess, has to keep putting himself in those positions. But yeah, it must have been pretty frustra for heel. And a lot of people online thought he'll won that.
- [05:19]
A
Yeah. So let's just dissect that quickly. Who's. Whose side you going to take? You going to be prohi or pro Lorenzo?
- [05:26]
B
Look, I'm going to go pro heel for the fact that he had two nines on the board and Lorenzo had only a single nine. And we'd been told that there's no category, so you got to take out the front rotations and the back rotations. He only had one crash. Lorenzo had no crashes, but I think he had the highest scores and I think in the long run, you've got to give the, the scores to the people who are getting more of the big numbers on the board.
- [05:48]
A
Okay. Yeah, you mentioned that you will take out the front row and back roll rotations there. But the fourth score, the 25 of the total score that the riders are given is overall impression, which a big section of that is variety. And Lorenzo had more variety. He also did two more tricks, landed tricks than heel. He'll did four, then Lorenzo did six. And Lorenzo was doing stuff that he'll cannot do. That's the counter argument.
- [06:21]
B
And by the way, that's a valid argument. And you know, that already makes me think it's a very, very tough one. This impression of variety has always been something that's upset writers and fans for many years. And we've always said it's. It's something that the judges can use to break down situations like that.
- [06:39]
A
It's.
- [06:40]
B
And how do they do that? There's no science to it, by the way. There's no nepotism or cronyism in these decisions. The guys, they're not favoring one guy over the other. I can, I can honestly say that with 100% confidence because I've seen the judging team, they're all fantastic and experienced judges, but it's something that I would like to see removed. I just feel like it's just. There's just something in that variety or impression that just sort of grates me in situations like this. How does it make you feel?
- [07:09]
A
Yeah, no, the impression score is bullshit for sure. However, I actually think it's necessary at the moment because without it, those Trick scores have to be so accurate, and these judges, bless them, don't get to do this. Many times a year they did a mega loop and now a smaller team than there was. That mega loop is here. And then they get to do a King of the Air three times a year. Sometimes they have new people in. The other thing is, they don't have video replay. They can't go back and rewatch something. And if two things happen at once, or two things happen in really close succession, they got zero time to reflect. What I'm saying is, in my opinion, the trick scoring isn't very accurate at all, and therefore the overall impression score is used to sort of determine who the right winner really is. And I think without it, you'd see more chaos.
- [08:07]
B
Yeah, I think you're right there. And I can think on two occasions where I saw, you know, the other situations when you got two guys jumping at the same time and that sort of takes one guy out, which I think we saw a couple of big tricks not scored. And then I thought we saw similar tricks. One scored in the sevens, one scored in the nines. So it's super tough. I mean, we are in a particularly difficult sport. If it's surfing, there's only one rider on a wave. Most times when we. When we're watching display, where it's, let's say, very subjective, we're only seeing one athlete at a time here. We're looking at. Sometimes the judges have to look at three. Three things happening in a big box and in those conditions as well. Right. I mean, you could see on the live stream, it looked like a bit of a whiteout. I mean, I laugh. When Pippa was there and she's saying, guys, I understand he can't see anything. So it's very tough. And the judges having to make decisions quickly that can impact people's lives is a very, very tough role. So I can see why that variety maybe can be, to coin a phrase, source, which they can use to. I don't know, maybe that's even wrong to say. Yeah, it's. It's a difficult.
- [09:07]
A
Use it to choose to make sure the right winner goes through for sure. Look, just last thing I'll say, in this particular heat that we're talking about, right, how is Lorenzo not getting nines for those. For that, you know, the. The clip we put on Instagram where it's heel and then Lorenzo goes straight after and we all completely lose our. And the kite's like so far below, he's still so high. They underscored Lorenzo massively there for sure. And heel at the very start of the whole competition, that 7.47 that you got, that is not a 7.47. For sure. For sure. It is not. So, like, there's two examples right there within a heat.
- [09:47]
B
Yeah. I mean, let's move on because I think that we could do a whole podcast on that. But I want to give you another winner. Steam Mo. Yeah. Again, I mean, the guy is just a sleeper. And I feel so bad that I said in the final that Steno's bought a. A knife to a gunfight. But he said in the little interview after, he said, guys, the first 10 minutes, I kind of sucked. Said no power, no energy. Then he got his flow on. That guy is a seriously good operator. And he was been riding back and back. Well, he was in the pro two days back and back or, you know, working his way up. He didn't burst onto the scene. He didn't even really find his foot till the after Bacal had finished. And it's only once we got into the gka, the GKA bigger years, that Steen started to find his groove and slowly work up. Leaving slingshot was a big move. They didn't have the NXT at the time. When he went to Cabrin, he started to develop on that kite. And I think we just seen them, this guy mature into an athlete, and a lot of that comes down to his approach to the sport. He has that sort of, you know, I don't care attitude. But did you see how pumped he was when he made the final? He's got that fire in him as well. And Stino is just.
- [10:52]
A
He's.
- [10:52]
B
I think he looks at the sport the right way.
- [10:55]
A
Yeah, he kind of cares without caring. If you listen to the whole live stream, which no doubt you did, because the commentary was just so good. You would have heard us talking about, like, other athletes that his mentality is maybe similar to. And Alcaraz, the tennis player was one that came to mind for me. Seems to be able to, like, care without caring, you know, like, he's not. Not scared of losing. He's not. He's just not that fast about the result yet. It doesn't really compromise his intensity or his ability to perform. And it works for him. That wouldn't work for everyone. I think someone like Lorenzo needs to be, like, hot on the line, sort of, if I don't win this, I'm going to explode. So, yeah, each to their own. But he's worked out how it works best for him and That's. That's awesome.
- [11:45]
B
Give me another loser.
- [11:46]
A
Colin, you'd have to say Jamie Overbeek, Justino beat. What's going on there, mate?
- [11:55]
B
It was so strange with Jamie. It's rocks or diamonds with Jamie, you know, it's like sometimes it's like unbelievable, and then other times he. He seems to go missing. I just don't know whether he gets unlucky in the heat, but he definitely needs a big break and I don't know what that break is. I don't know if he needs a little bit of momentum or something. And by the way, I'm going to put Josh Gillett into that group with Jamie because I kind of feel like he's the same as well.
- [12:20]
A
Right.
- [12:21]
B
I would have thought that Josh's strength has always been the doubles game. That's when Josh has been his best, right. When he can throw those big doubles and just really put it out there and go crazy. There was double conditions out there. He could have gone. The guys weren't scoring it. But I kind of feel like Josh is stuck between a rock and a hard place here. Not to take away from my rocks versus diamonds, but he seems that he needs to have a good look at the way he wants to approach the sport. And I'm not picking on Josh or Jamie because I love both of these guys, but something's not working for those guys. Something that's firing. I don't know what it is. I can't put my finger. Do you. Do you have any idea what's. What that is?
- [12:55]
A
I think you could also put Luca Cerucci into that camp as well. He's up against Lorenzo in a semifinal. To beat Lorenzo, you're going to have to do something different. You can't try and beat him at what he's good at. He's going to annihilate you. But Luca just tried to do Lorenzo stuff and I think, yeah, Luca's got good doubles. Josh has got good doubles. Why weren't they doubling? Why weren't they doing something different to try and change the result? Jamie? I'm not sure. One thing that comes to mind with Jamie, though, is that presumably he doesn't get new kites for every competition. Right. So presumably those D Lab rebels were the ones who was on in Mega Loop, which is the same for a lot of pro riders. I get that. However, Jamie is also training on these. Jamie doesn't have, like, backup kites of these, so they're the ones that are flapping on the beach all day and then is Jamie also going to take those to king of the air. And I think we're starting to see a downside of Jamie's setup here. Not only does he not get the freshest prototypes and like new ideas, he's, he gets off the shelf stock stuff and like for instance, Andrea is going to be on a newer D lab Rebel that's going to feature a new material apparently and Jamie's not going to be on that. But not only that, but Jamie's also want old looking gear.
- [14:26]
B
That's something I never thought about it but it makes so much sense, you know, I mean these guys put gear under a lot of pressure. Right. And you know it's not made for long term riding for at that pro level. Yeah, that's something that I never really thought about. It's probably a very, very good point. And look for sure Jamie and the over team overbeat will be looking into this. By the way, Jamie didn't start out bad. He, you know, started one is he one is round one one round three against Parker Sage who by the way we can talk about him in a second. So he was performing well. He just ran into Steen. Maybe stains his kryptonite. Steen knocked him out of the king of there as well. I mean every rider has that, you know, every rider has that sort of person that's like, man, I don't know what is about this guy ball or you're playing tennis. I don't know what was about this player or someone that they always have the edge on you and you can't put your finger on it. So maybe that is for, for Jamie but for sure Jamie, for Josh, for Luca, they can come back. You know we, we coined the term losers here but they're not actually losers. They're just people that we saying didn't have the best event. Let's talk about a winner. Parker Sage. Unbelievable performance from Parker. Actually the best he's written. I mean last year he kind of shit the bed here. He didn't have the greatest king of the year. He's ridden the, the Tarifa event didn't do so well but man, this was a Parker that I wish we'd seen a lot longer ago. I don't know what it is. I saw him early in the day, said, mate, I'm ready for this one. I'm not cold. I think remember last year he had a hole in his wetsuit and dude, he was unbelievable.
- [15:51]
A
Yeah. Parker also won a prototype reading kite. There was Kevin Langer in the, in the YouTube comments cheering him on. That was quite sick. And, yeah, Parker just rode his ass off really, didn't he? Whereas in previous competitions we've sort of seen him kind of brown the inside of his own pants a bit. So it was really good to see him match it because he's always been there, right? He's always been. You know, he hangs out with the likes of Zach Adams and Baby Shark and his peers don't regard him as an idiot. But this was the first time we really saw him sort of realized his potential. So that was good. Let's have a loser. I'm going to go with not Jason Vander Spa, but Jason Van Der Space's kite. It just. I don't know why, it just didn't seem to be working in those conditions. We have seen it work in other conditions, like a mega loop. It looks sick, but at this one, it just. I don't know, it looked like he was battling with a performance gap that day. And I said it on the live stream like his kite was sat so far back in the window on takeoff that he was just lacking so much vertical lift. And, yeah, I was just looking at him being like, okay, that's a guy that can do all the stuff, but it's like not on the right shit in this instance. But, yeah, strange, because he was epic at Megaloo.
- [17:07]
B
Where does that leave Jason now? I mean, King of is around the corner. For sure. He's going to make it, but he's. To be. Let's be honest, he's on that fringe area now.
- [17:15]
A
I think, though, that those kites. Because airash is, you know, the offices in Cape Town is probably more tuned to the winds of Cape Town. So it'll probably be better there. Maybe it'll return to the form of how the Airash kite looked in at Megaloop. So I think he'll be all right if he is on that kite for. For King of the Air. But yeah, that was a shame for Jason. Again, this was a chance for Jason to maybe go on short lines, and we just didn't see it. And I just don't really know why. Come on, Jason. We love the short line shit.
- [17:52]
B
That's interesting because all week we're. We're talking about doing something different, you know. Why. Why do guys do something different when it's not really the rule? Sometimes you don't have a choice. Sometimes if you, you know, I mean, you have to try something new. If it's not working, you try it. But let's go to another positive. I want A big shout out to the. To the Denmark Red Bull team up there with the media. Man, those guys were unbelievable. They had a complete power outage at one stage. They packed down the. The judging booth, they got it into another area, they turned the stuff around, they battled with the camera. They'd lost two or three cameras, but they just kept on pushing on. I was super impressed with the way those guys work. They turned up at 2 o' clock in the morning, and at 2 o' clock in the Morning, we've got videos and we've got it on the inside, on the broadcast on the portrait channel of the waves actually coming up and breaking into the container. And those guys pushed right through the night. They worked all day and I believe they're packing up and going to another event in Copenhagen after that. So I thought, they're unbelievable. They're a great team to work for. They're super professional, they're super organized. And, yeah, they're a massive winner for me in the crazy conditions that we.
- [18:54]
A
Were facing, because, let's face it, when the waves crashed into the containers containing. Containers containing the judges and the camera people and then the power went out, that probably should have been game over, right? Like, I was sat there. I'm sure we were like, I don't know, if you come back from this, this is the sort of thing that you don't really come back from. Maybe we all just pretend this didn't. None of this, this day didn't happen at all. Uh, but, yeah, they kind of clawed it back from the edges of quite a nasty death. If you're. If you're an Xbox person from the. From the 90s, that was. They had the red ring, but they fixed it.
- [19:40]
B
To be honest, I was dreading the fact that they were going to come and say, guys, that, you know, we're just going to finish for the day, because I was thinking, oh, I need to go home. I have to stay one more day. But the hilarious thing was that the judges all came into the booth where we're doing the commentary. And Colin, I was sitting in our T shirt and shorts at that stage, you know, sipping, you know, fresh, cold red balls and eating cheese. Cheese sandwiches. And those guys were completely soaked, completely soaked and pissed off and mad. And they wanted our room. I said, you can't take this because of the cameras. It's all set up for the media.
- [20:12]
A
That's not what. No, no, that's not what we said. We said, guys, you can come in here, we can swap.
- [20:17]
B
I was standing behind you doing the sort of slashing of the throat. No, no, no, no, it's not happening. But I mean, hey, let, let's, let's give the judges a shout out. We were giving them a bit of a hard time at the start about, you know, some of the close calls. I think they did a pretty good job, bearing in mind that to pack up the whole thing and go to another container and get back up line and get working and, you know, to heat, get the heat scoring going and all that stuff that they have to go through. I believe Sergio Kendigali's laptop is completely ruined and I think we're only down for like 30 minutes. We're back up in line. So pretty good shout out to those guys.
- [20:50]
A
Indeed. Okay, should we just cuss all the shit and talk about the real winner?
- [20:55]
B
Which one? Yeah, let's talk about Jeremy. Absolutely huge winner.
- [21:01]
A
He was unreal. At Red Bull Mega Loop a couple weeks ago, ran into Jason Van Der Spa, who got him on this unbelievable move that Jason did. Fair play, Jason Van der Spey Wiz on two weeks. We're in cold Hawaii. He's the first person we saw, actually. We opened our little booth after we'd done our pre recording things. And there's Jeremy and his best mate Jacopo, just walking down the gangway after having felt the wind a bit. And Jacopo, his friend, goes to me, do you think Jeremy's going to win or was it Jeremy is going to win? I can't remember one of those two. And I was like, yeah, I think Jeremy's going to win this. And it bloody happened. And it kind of looked like he had zero hesitations in doing it as well. He was sick from round one, Heat one. I know in the interview on the post show. And you can go and watch down portraitkite.com if you want to go and hear from the horse's mouths, which you normally would in the podcast, but now we're doing them via videos on the site, so shut up. He talked about how he didn't feel right in round one, but for me, I saw the ingredients he needed to go the whole way from, from the very first tricks.
- [22:12]
B
Absolutely. And you know, I've said it a lot this year. I was worried about, about Jeremy. He didn't look the same in Mykonos, but I just felt that it all clicked and when you have an injury, you just need that little moment in time when you realize, I got the shit. And he was saying on the podium, I know how to fucking kite. And that from that moment on Jeremy is back. We would be talking about Andrea Lorenzo. So much back and forth, but, man, let's push Jeremy back into that mix because he's always been there. He deserves to be. That broken leg rattled his confidence, and I was sort of waiting for that moment, that breakthrough moment, that moment of clarity when it's like, holy shit, I know I can do this again. And we saw that. We saw glimpses of it. The mega loop. He got a little bit upset in that. In the pre show, he's talking about having to have a good look at himself, but it was amazing to see that moment of clarity come to fruition. And when he came on the beach, he took his. He took his. He took his. His thing off and just threw it. It's almost like, win or lose, Jeremy knew, hey, I'm back in the game. I'm a serious competitor again, and I don't care the outcome. Amazing that he went on to win, but throwing the. Throwing the bar on the beach, that amazing photo is, for me, is a sign that this kid's back.
- [23:25]
A
Trapp is back.
- [23:27]
B
I haven't had a chance to go back and look at the final again. Have you. Have you rewatched the final?
- [23:31]
A
Yeah, it was mental. I mean, the ball got passed back and forth between Lorenzo and. And Jeremy so many times. I think it's like six or seven, maybe even up to eight times that the leader of the heat changed. And it all came down to those last moves. It was the last 30 seconds. Jeremy found it on the buzzer.
- [23:51]
B
Very similar to the 2024 win in Gran Canaria. Yeah, amazing. I mean, we. We saw that heat scoring app going. Jeremy's in the lead. Rinses in the league. Jeremy's in the lead. Rinse in the lead. It was just awesome to watch. Let's talk about Lorenzo. For me, he's a massive winner. I mean, I have got the stats in front of me. He barely crashed. He was just putting up big scores the whole time. But I think that these losses hurt. But I think he needs to sit back and look at the body of work he put in and be proud of it. The guy's so robotic. He's so impressive. He never looks like he's going to crash. He's pushing the boat out every time. He's going the highest. He's got the kite in the best angle, but he's got to stop beating himself up over these little losses. You can't. Like Andrea said, hey, you can't win every time. And I'm happy With my trap brother winning, he should take that same medicine. What do you think about that?
- [24:43]
A
I don't know what gets the best out of Lorenzo psychologically. And, like, maybe he needs to be really hard on himself and be. Have really high expectations to get the most out of his performance. I don't know. Maybe also he'd be even better if he was more the other way as you described. I don't know. We don't know. Only Lorenzo really knows. And maybe he doesn't. Maybe so young he doesn't know what the best thing for him is. But tell you what, whatever he's doing at the moment, it's kind of working, isn't it? You'd have to say, amazing year so far. Amazing year. And going into King of the Air, he's probably the favorite. And the thing is, Jeremy got him on this day by a hairline margin. But I do think because of Lorenzo's, like, AI ability to just stomp the same tricks no matter what the conditions, with unbelievable execution. Like, he's going as high as everyone else, but his kite is way lower and he's able to do the most hectic rotations with it too. He's operating on a level that no one else can match in that regard at the moment. Yeah, Andrea can do more creative stuff. More stuff that looks more improvisational. Jeremy's just got, like, insane stays and ability to, like, make landings look just effortless. And I also think that NXT is going more consistently high. It just seems to find a gust and, like, keep going and keep ascending. But taking all that into consideration, I think if you had 10 colter wise, I think Lorenzo would win the majority.
- [26:31]
B
Of them without Andre in the fleet with that. You mean of that? Repeating that final?
- [26:36]
A
Repeating that final. If you Repeat that final 10 times, Lorenzo is going to win the majority.
- [26:41]
B
I agree 100%. Absolutely 100%. But that's a great point all of them have. When we talk about all of them, we're talking about the trap guys. They're all three of them are slightly different, which actually. Which actually adds more beauty to the equation. Because if they're all the same, which I. You can probably argue in the past, Lorenzo and Andre were pretty similar back in the day, similar styles, the way they rode, but now they're sort of drifted into the way they interpret big air, which is super cool. Let's talk a little bit about Heel. Another huge winner. I know we spoke to him about the heat of the day, but just unbelievable at his age, still doing it, still wanting to do it. Still being aggressive in that final we spoke about Lorenzo's trick. There's one trick when, when. When heel goes up, does the late back. The kite, it's almost like it's frozen in time. It's like, it's like frozen there and then it continues. I mean, it's just such fearless writing. He doesn't have the super technical side of those guys, but, man, what he does have, he does super well. And it's just that power. It's doing what the judges want to see and he still gets for his results. I mean, but, man, I still think he can win the big one. He just needs a couple of things to go his way. These close battles to go his way. I mean, if he made it to the final, he was in with a shot, we would have said he's in with a shot. Yeah.
- [27:59]
A
And you wouldn't have said that last year. I put that to him in the, in the post show. Go and watch it. You can hear him talk about how he was told that he had beaten Lorenzo and then it got reversed and it's all pretty heartbreaking. But the interesting bit of that interview is he's like, yeah, the kite is making a big difference. The XR Pro 2, newly released. In the interview, I'm like, I don't think he's doing himself justice by saying the kite, but having kind of thought about it and I know I'm in Fairmont right now, maybe I've got core propaganda in my ears, I don't know. But if you think about it, for heel to be matching the height of these other guys that were all lighter than him. Yeah, he's on one size bigger, but he's still managing to loop it just as easy. I think that's a sign that that kite has got serious lift in it. Serious lift in it. And I wouldn't be surprised if It's a core XR2 that smashes a WOO leaderboard.
- [28:57]
B
Well, this was the size of the. The Wu record back in the day when the, when the XR Pro was released. This was the site where they, where they broke that record on that famous day. It was kind of funny seeing the boys going out for. For WOO jumps after. Right. As soon as they got knocked out, they were Woos on the board and out the back. And I think Josh did a 35 meter jump that day. I'll just check that score later and I'll update that, mate.
- [29:17]
A
Yeah, mate. Jamie went 36.1 meters. That's not even a PR for him.
- [29:23]
B
That's crazy.
- [29:24]
A
And when he, when he was doing it, we were packing up. I think you'd maybe left at this point, Adrian. But we were getting in the car. The portrait boys were getting in the car. And in the car park facing the other way, there was people like putting their wetsuits on, ready to go out for a kite. And they saw Jamie go above the buildings between the car park and the sea and they were like, oh, like they'd never seen anything like it. And I turned around and I was like, that is well, that is well up there on the Woo leaderboards. Whatever height that was, Trust me, that's 30 meters plus, trust me. And he was repeatedly doing was mental, mental conditions. Josh Gillet also jumping super high. But Jamie can just do it so consistently. And I still think, I still think Jamie's the best wooer of all time by a considerable margin.
- [30:18]
B
Absolutely. He doesn't seem like he's so focused on it. I'm sure now he's going to probably pick some. Pick and choose some kites. But. And so that just shows another winner is. Let's call it kite technology. Because to get those jumps you need to go, you used to have to chase those massive crazy storms. These guys are riding 8 meter kites, heels on a 9 meter kite. That was unheard of three or four years ago to go out in 45 gusting 50 knot winds on that size kites. But that's how much the technology of these kites has got better over the years. I mean looking, you know that rewatch with Andre, he's riding a 5 meter and probably pretty similar conditions. It's kind of crazy that in the space of three years he's almost riding. Well, they're almost riding, you know, almost double. Not quite, but almost double. I mean it was pretty, pretty wild.
- [31:04]
A
So just to give it some context, that 36.1 meter jump is the highest jump of all time on a duotone kite. Jamie Overbeak, he reckons he was on a 7 meter rebel. That's what it says here.
- [31:17]
B
Okay.
- [31:18]
A
I'd be kind of surprised if that's true. I think it's. Yeah. But it does say it so we'll believe it. Guess who the. You're not gonna guess. I'm just going to tell you who the previously highest jumper on a duo turn kite was. Aaron. 35.1 meters in Makassar.
- [31:33]
B
Oh, was it. I was going to say I thought that would have been the jump at the same location.
- [31:37]
A
No.
- [31:38]
B
Was that 35 meters?
- [31:40]
A
20, 24.35.1. Jamie, interestingly, also holds the highest woo jump ever done on an F1. He did 36 meters on the dot on the brainchild trigger on New year's day in 20. 20. 25. 20, 20, 25. Interesting. Okay. Josh Gillett went 35.9, by the way. So Jamie only holds that by 10. 10 centimeters.
- [32:07]
B
Let's talk about one more rider. Charles Braudel, winner or loser for you? Yes to the winner or yes to the loser? You just went yes right in the middle of what I was saying. It's a tough one for me. I've got him in the middle, I think.
- [32:20]
A
Yeah, I think he was scored. I think he was scored more fairly. But did we see his. Did he realize his potential? No. So therefore I think he has to be in the losing category.
- [32:32]
B
For me, he got the pops when he was doing the doubles and the S loops. Right. The crowd loved that. But he just. The judges don't seem to like it. Maybe we're seeing the end of the doubles. I mean, I don't want to say it's over, but I kind of feel like we're getting away from that now. And the judges like this more height, bigger freefall kite in that great position. I kind of feel it's going that way. I'm not saying that we're never going to see doubles in competition again because that's just crazy statement, but it does seem that way. That's going to impact. Lorenzo, heel. Josh. For sure, Charles. But when Charles went to the bigger kite, he didn't get the same. People were as excited. That's the thing. The doubles bring excitement, doesn't bring the scores. The singles bring the scores, but they don't bring the same excitement unless it's a very, very close heat where you got guys going back to back or a crazy final. Is that fair to say?
- [33:23]
A
I think doubles might come back into play if it's like door to tram conditions. And I just think back to Josh Gillick going absolutely ballistic at Shahar Sabri as well. So, yeah, do I think we're going to see them at King of the Air? No. For years the Traff have been saying Cape Town's not even that windy. We've never believed it, but because for amateurs it's like ridiculous. It's horribly windy. Horribly windy. But now we've done Megaloop and Kota Wai back to back and they're all on eight and like anyone in their right mind would be on a six or below. I'm kind of coming around to that idea that Actually, these European events have just a way, way higher sort of threshold for wind.
- [34:08]
B
Even the Lords of Tram is another one when they're on smaller kites.
- [34:12]
A
Yeah, exactly, exactly. So weird that King of the Air is kind of looking like more the light wind event.
- [34:18]
B
Can we still call cold Hawaii kiteboarding's windiest event? Or has it become kiteboarding's craziest event because it wasn't just windy. I mean, the conditions were outrageous. I mean, guys, it doesn't come across on the live stream how horrible it actually was there. It was insane.
- [34:34]
A
It was not a good day out of the beach for the family. Yeah, I think. I think it's positioned perfectly to capture the windiest conditions that Europe can provide and therefore the world can provide. I think it's set up for it and I think it could. If you told me, oh, yeah, next year, cold or white, blue is tits off. Everyone was terrified and it's the windiest event of all time, I'd be like, yeah, fair. I saw that one coming.
- [34:59]
B
Yeah, absolutely. Guys, let's wrap that up there. On Monday, Jeremy Blando joins me on the show to go over that event and talk about his mindset coming into it. I'm super looking forward to that because he has had a tough year and I want to ask him some questions about that as well. I will put the link to the post show in the show notes. So if you didn't see that, check that out. We catch up with all the final. We catch up with Hill straight after the event when the guys are still in their wetsuits. It's a really cool way to. To get that adrenaline and really get that information straight to you. And yeah, I think. I think we're done.
- [35:29]
A
Colin, last thing from me, we're in the middle of Woo Worlds. You heard about. It's crazy, isn't it? They're in cold Hawaii. They're just lost heat or whatever. And the reaction is not to go back to the car and cry, it's to go and put the Woo on the board and go and compete in Woo World and try and try and give those leaderboards a bit of a battering team. Total distance is the next biggie coming up, so yippee.
- [35:55]
B
Let's go Wu Tang Clan ship monks.
- [35:58]
A
Okay, we need a big. We need to respond here. Let's just leave it at that. Okay? Thanks for us, as always. See you at the next one. Goodbye.