Benjamin

Erwann

Benjamin & Malte

Jerome

Michel & Malte

It is no coincidence that the European championships top 5 places fell to pilots flying Ozone’s most successful race kite the Yakuza.

This does not detract from the amazing efforts and skill of the pilots who gave everything to be up there on the podium. Well done guys..!!

After a windless three days the final day of racing was to be a nail biting conclusion to the championships with nobody standing out as a clear winner right until the last race. In the end French team rider Benjamin Bartholomeus won the event flying his Ozone Yakusa’s after being the most consistent during the weeks racing.
Malte Lutz from Germany who is still current world champion came a very close second and S. Schapman from France coming third place.

Erwann Mievielle France and Michelle Dekker from the Dutch team placed 4th and 5th.

Read on for Malte’s report of the week……

Hi everyone,
The European championchips 2007 are closed now and i was able to come 2nd with the Ozone Yakuza and my Xxtreme ApexX. Jeah!

As we arrived some days before the races start we could enjoy this really nice beach in it‘s total lengh – about 15km driving on sand as hard as the road your driving on with your car!

Unfortunately, the beach become more and more wet so in the first races on monday nearly everyone went out with disc wheels. Together with strong offshore winds and gusts from nearly 0 to 6 bft the races were quite hard and not everybody could finish them.

In the first race I took my 7.3m Yakuza on really short 14m lines, a little bit too small as it turned out and so i only finished 6th. The 2nd race was a little bit better. Everything was perfect for the 6m Yakuza. when the wind picked up I was  lifted out of my buggy whilst leading the race – so i fell back to 4th position. Before the race masters decided to start a 3rd race the beach become more and more dry and i changed to my bigfood buggy. It was a perfect descision.  After the first round on the 5m Yakuza i was about 500m in front of the 2nd placed pilot when I started the 2nd lap. But then 3 of my lines get broken in a hard downwind turn and the race was canceled about 5mins after that because of an accident. We had no more races That day and over all I was 3rd.

The next 3 days there was no wind so no races could be held. Then – on friday – we had quite the same conditions as on Monday but with less wind. I went out on disc wheels all day and they were really nice to drive on a hard and wet beach. Driving with my 10m & 12m Yakuza I  finished 2nd in one race and 1st in two others. Bad luck for me was the fact, that I changed in the 2nd race of the day my kite with the Dutch Ozone rider John who had a broken front wheel and could not  finish his race. I didn’t know that it was forbidden under the  FISLY rules,  so I became last in this race and had to discard it.

With a nice closing ceremony the week ended,  early saturday we went back home to Germany. Overall it was a really nice week over there with nice guys and a good organization but the conditions could have been better…

Cheers Malte

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