Jalou Langeree – 2018 GKA Kite-Surf World Champion
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Meet the GKA Kite-Surf World Tour 2018 Women’s Champion Jalou Langeree! Jalou’s win in Torquay, Australia, secured her the 1st ever GKA Kite-Surf World Tour Title after a hard-fought season where she battled Moona Whyte and Carla Herrera Oria for the top spot since the first event back in February in Cape Verde.
Opting to ride the Pivot and Skater, Jalou was feeling right at home in the onshore conditions at Point Danger in Torquay, Australia. The quick reaction of the Pivot allowed Jalou to make fast adjustments on the wave as well as provide superior low-end power in the onshore, light wind conditions. With both the Global and Skater in her board quiver, the Skater proved to be the best choice for the mushy waves on hand. Its wide outline carried momentum better in flat wave sections and allowed Jalou to really put some power into her turns.
As with any wind event, the weather is always the wildcard factor. Luckily there was just enough wind and wave action for competition to run. “We were hoping to get better conditions than we had. The wind was coming from all directions and the waves were actually pretty mushy. It felt a lot like being in Europe. Still, I felt comfortable, despite the wind being onshore, I’m stoked that we were able to get a result because that was a big question with the forecast,” said Jalou after the event.
This is Jalou’s third career world title and she couldn’t be more stoked to win in her first year back on tour fulltime. While wave riding has been her focus over the past few years, the strapless freestyle events were ones that had her more nervous to compete in. Starting the tour off with a win in February at Cape Verde, Jalou worked hard all year to strengthen areas where she needed to improve. “I wanted to do well on tour I and knew that I had to work on my strapless freestyle,” said Jalou. This work ethic came to fruition when she won the Ceara Kite Pro in Brazil and put herself in the driver’s seat to win the world title in Australia.
The Brazil event also was one of Jalou’s favourite stops. “I wasn’t sure if I was going to be skilled enough to do the strapless freestyle events but I really worked hard on getting a couple tricks down. I travelled to Brazil early to work on some tricks as the wind was so strong and consistent there which made learning new tricks super easy,” said Jalou. “It was a great trip. I had a lot of fun and there were a lot of talented riders which had me really motivated.”
As an added bonus to her weekend, Jalou has also announced the winner of the Real Watersports Cape Hatteras Wave Classic Video Shootout. While the original Cape Hatteras Wave Classic was cancelled due to a Hurricane this past September, the video format opened up the contest to people from all over the world and Jalou was very happy to win as well. “It was kind of overwhelming to win two major titles in one weekend,” said Jalou “I didn’t know what to expect with the video contest but it was awesome.”
After a long year on tour, Jalou is looking forward to continuing to improve her riding and plans on focusing more trips to good wave spots and producing lots of content. “I’m not going to do the whole tour next year, but I will be going to a couple stops I want to, like if Mauritius is confirmed then I definitely see myself going,” said Jalou. “I really want to focus on being in the right place during the right season and step my game up in bigger waves.” We certainly can’t wait to see what Jalou comes out within 2019!
