Tuesday 23rd April Update – GKA Leucate 2019
Tue 23rd Apr, 2019 @ 10:35 am
This is day four of six in the GKA Freestyle World Cup Leucate event window and we have entered the more serious wind forecast period. Heavy rain overnight fell as predicted and continued through dawn in the early morning. Combined with the surging waves pushing over the sandbank, we have a superb lagoon for potentially brilliant freestyle conditions.
The skipper’s meeting was scheduled for 7 am as there was potential for the southeast wind to be in already – however, the reality was a very light wind from the northwest (Tramontane) direction. The wind has since switched to the forecast southerly, though remains light.
Still Hopeful To Start Today!
The forecast for the next two days looks good, however, as we are now over halfway through the event period Head Judge Mallory de la Villemarque has announced a reduced heat format to ensure that when the action begins it will be possible to reach a result as efficiently as possible. Here are the details:
Standard Format
The standard format for the 2019 GKA Freestyle World Cup events is that there are (usually) four riders in a heat who take it in turns to do one trick. Each rider is allowed seven trick attempts in their heat and their four highest scoring tricks from four different trick families count towards their score.
A big screen on the shoreline shows the score for each trick and then shows what the next rider needs to take the lead/win.
Each rider will have one minute to do their trick, with a countdown timer showing on the big screen. Read more about the 2019 Freestyle events and heat formats here.
Revised Structure
- The heat ladder will become a single elimination, rather than a dingle. There will still be four riders in the first heats; the lowest two will go straight out of the competition. The top two from each heat will progress.
- Riders will take it in turns to do their tricks, but they will only get six attempts instead of seven, with their four best tricks counting.
- As the wind direction is changing for Wednesday and Thursday and looking strong for those days. In anticipation of that, the live stream crew have had to set up at a new location to be able to broadcast on those days, so although there will be no live stream today, there will be a superb highlight video if action commences!
The official Leucate event page with all assets, images, videos and more is here.
For more information, please click here.
