The PKRA Kitesurf Worldtour headed to its last tour stop this year in Matanzas/Chile where 48 kitesurfers from many different countries meet from October 4th till 11th to fight for the World championship titles in the Freestyle and Wave Riding disciplines. In the men's Freestyle discipline 4 times world champion Aaron Hadlow (England) and Kevin Langeree (Netherlands) are still in contention for the world championship title but Langeree has to win this last event and Hadlow has to finish 3rd or worse. For the girls Gisela Pulido (Spain) can wrap up her 2nd world championship title with a win over current contender Bruna Kajiya (Brazil). This tour stop is the only wave riding competition on this year's tour so the winner here will be world cahmpion in wave riding. Kicking off the competition were the wave
riders who ran the entire day's event. The competition ladder for the
wave riding is a dingle format where the first round winners will
automatically advance to the third round while the 2nd and 3rd place
finishers of the first round would compete in a second round
elimination. The winner from the second round will then advance to the
third round and compete with the 1st place winners of the first round.
From there, the competition went man on man and the winner advanced to
the next round while the loser will be out of the game. In the
first round elimination, Fernando Paraud (Best, PER), Sky Solbach
(North, USA), Kevin Langeree (Naish, NED), Eduardo Carrad (No Stress,
BRA), Jeremy Eloy (North, FRA), Guilly Brandao (Mormaii, BRA), Roberto
Nascimiento (Best, BRA), and Etienne Lhote (Fone, FRA) all defeated
their respective competitors and advanced to the third round. This same
batch of winners also emerged victorious in the third round with the
exception of Lhote who lost to Dreu Beavis (North, AUS). In
round number four, Fenando Paraud defeated Solbach while Langeree defeated
Carrad in the 17th heat runs. Eloy lost to Brandao and Beavis was
defeated by Nascimiento in the 18th heats. Race Director
Eric Troostheide decided to have a 10-minute break immediately
following the semi-finals before running the finals. It was a
Langeree-Brandao fight in the finals while Paraud met Beavis for the
third podium spot. Although the wave competition was completed, the
results will not be released until Saturday for the awarding ceremony.
The judging criteria's were basically a point system with the best two
waves during a heat which counted to their overall score. The
competitor with the best waves selection and ability to ride them would
score the highest. The day wrapped up at around 6:00 pm with dying winds and waves. It was a fast-paced, action-packed second
day as the freestyle single eliminations were completed for both the
men and the women's division. Andy Yates (Slingshot, AUS) turned up the
heat with an easy win over Manuel Bustos (Morph, ARG) in heat #2b but
bowed down to PKRA's World Number 3 Alvaro Onieva (Best, ESP) in the
9th heat. Cayque Aquino (Naish, BRA) defeated local rider Jose Tomas
Valenzuela (North, CHI) in their 8th heat match-up with the Brazilian
rider winning over with a higher technical difficulty score and more
trick variation. Sebastien Garat (RRD, France) overtook
North's Tom Court (GBR) in the 9th heat via technical difficulty. Garat then defeated Onieva in the 13th
heat with more varied tricks. Tom Hebert (Airush, New Caledonia) is doing
absolutely fantastic this year, currently ranking number 6 in the PKRA
and has been in all the Tour stops this year. He defeated Austria's
Michael Schitzhofer (JN Kites) in heat #10 with a display of greater
technical riding skills, coupled with a greater height advantage and
switch variety. He then faced current Tour title challenger Kevin
Langeree (Naish, NED) in the 13th heat, which spelled bad news for
Hebert. Langeree won over Hebert with a much higher technical
difficulty rating and landed more varied tricks. The Dutch rider later defeated Garat to advance into
the finals. Despite Alex Pastor (Naish, ESP) crashing heavily
and ruining his kite in heat #11b, he already had enough moves landed
to take the win over Madison Van Heurck (Naish, USVI). Pastor won with
better executed moves and a higher technical riding score. Heat
#14 was a fight for the fourth in the total rankings between Mikael
Blomvall (Nobile, SWE) and Pastor. Blomvall took the win with a 3-2
decision, claiming 4th overall for now. Blomvall landed more technical moves and had more variety while
Pastor went for the bigger moves but butt-checked a lot on his
landings. An all-fired up
Aaron Hadlow (Flexifoil, GBR) took an easy 15th heat win over Blomvall
who had a bad heat, crashing several moves. Blomvall settled for third place overall by
defeating Garat for the last podium . The final heat was,
again, between Langeree and Hadlow. Claiming the world championship
title, Hadlow landed took the win with more switch variety and a lower kite position on top of
riding with more power. Langeree went bigger in his moves but had his
kite a bit higher and lacked the switch variety. This win over his fiercest rival on the tour this year eventually gave Hadlow his 5th consecutive world championship title in Freestyle Kiteboarding.
The first day of action took place under a clear sky with 17 to 20 knots of wind and temperatures of 15°C. 
On the 2nd day the sky was cloudy to overcast in the morning but the clouds disappeared during the freestyle elimination rounds. The wind in the morning was mostly light,
averaging only 8 knots. Therefore the freestyle elimination was postponed untill 11:30 when wind had become stronger and stabilized at a good level for fantastic kiteboarding action:
The ladies had their equal share of extreme
kiteboarding action. Elena Pitoulis (North, GRE) won her heat by
defeating Alexandra Maslova (North, RUS) in heat #6 with a 3-2 decision
but lost to Gisela Pulido (Slingshot, ESP) in the 7th heat.
Bruna
Kajiya (Best, BRA), winning with air pass moves defeated Susi Mai
(Cabrinha, GER) in heat #7a winning with a much higher technical
rating.
In the fight for third place overall, Mai emerged victorious over Pitoulis. Mai won via technical difficulty. The final heat also had Gisela waving to the crowd from the top podium position, beating Bruna Kajiya (Best, BRA) with higher technical riding level and cleaner landings. Congratulations to Gisela Pulido for winning the 2008 PKRA World Championship Title, her 2nd in a row and at the age of 14.
