Any more new designs in the pipeline?
Yes, I’m going to Portugal again really soon to test and give my impressions on the new flat water 14’ x 21.5’’ they are working on. It’s a very important project for us competitors as we always want the fastest board possible, you know what I mean? [laughs]. It seems like they are working on something very amazing, I can’t wait to try it.
You just came back from USA after an intense series of races. How do you feel ?
It was intense as you said. Early fall is always busy but this year we had the ISA world championships in September. It was an honour for me once again to join the French team again and represent my country in Denmark. I got 6th on the long distance race in Copenhagen and stayed in the front pack with the guys so even if I was expecting little better, it wasn’t a bad result. Same for sprints but for the technical finals, I was really disappointed, we can say it wasn’t my day. I had a terrible start and struggled to make it up. My sadness disappeared when we (French team) took the second place overall, such a great collective result.
So you arrived in the USA focused and in a good state of mind for the Pacific Paddle Games and other events ?
Yes, PPG is huge and you need to get a good result there, everyone comes and wants the same, I guess. I finished 10th despite a few mistakes in long distance which is acceptable as we can say, but I wish there were more waves to add some spice and surprises.
Then we had the Red Bull heavy water contest in San Francisco a few weeks later and things were not the same. That was so rough, you couldn’t imagine, we had to fight through 6-8 foot close outs, like a carnage race! All the competitors will remember that event for a long time, I think.
