Myself and Rob are just back from 5 great days in St.Peter Odening, Germany where the 2004 Buggy World Championships are taking place…

What a beach….a normally sleepy German resort close to the Danish boarder was chosen to host the Worlds. The beach is huge…the only downer with it is all kite sports are allowed except KGB (Landboarding), which is a real shame because the surface is perfect!

We turned up a few days before the event with some new protos and managed to trim the kites with top buggy racer Michel Dekker and the UK Ozone buggy team comprising of Graham Steele (British Champion), Chris Hill and Steve Burgoine.

The latest race protos are looking great and performing really well….lets just hope they get to actually use them in a race!

The Thursday, Friday and Saturday before the event we had amazing weather, but as is so often the case, the day an event starts the weather turned to shit…!

The opening party was amazing and featured a Coyote Ugly theme straight out of the movie! The barmaids really got into it, dancing on the bar pouring shots directly from the bottle into eager mouths!

The party was pretty nuts but in reality it was nothing of what was to come… by 6 am in the morning with some people still partying the storm increased and flooded the beach and it forced the event organizers to take down all the marquees due to the winds gusting from force 7 to force 9!! The beach was completely flooded which resulted in some stranded cars needing to be dragged out by tractors. A real nightmare, and gut wrenching for the great organizers who have put so much into this event by securing mainstream sponsors and enough funds to make for an impressive competition. The 1st official race day on the Sunday 12th had to be canned as did the Monday!!

Windsurfers were loving life windsurfing where the buggy drivers would normally have been racing!! The forecast for Monday 13th was for a force 11, so fingers crossed the weather improves and the water level recedes so they can race. Tuesday was the first official race day, with Ozone riders Michel Dekkar finishing 3rd and Graham Steele finishing 7th. On Wednesday the race was stopped after the leaders had finished but the rules means the result is void, a shame for Michel who had finished in 3rd again. We will bring you the final results just as soon as we have them.

For more info check out the World official website and click on webcam for pictures from each day www.kitebuggy-wm2004.de

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