Mondial Du Vent (03/2007)

After a seriously long and stressful journey down (1000 miles), we finally arrived at Leucate for what seemed to be the perfect event. Mondial Du Vent seemed to have covered all aspects of winds sports and brought it all together with one seriously big event. Leucate is known for its big winds and for a whole week we had less than 15 knots, which was fairly disappointing.

Day 1- The day we arrived in Leucate was fairly windless. Despite no sleep and no wind, we were still eager to get out for a fly and test out the dried lake, as neither, myself, Mark Berry and Tom Beaton had been given the opportunity to ride this kind of surface before. I initially took out my 9.5 Sabre II to get used to the ground conditions. It was fairly slippery at the start due to moist air at night however it was rock solid and fairly nice to ride. During my time on the Sabre, I managed to land one of my cleanest backmobes which I was fairly chuffed with seeing as there was hardly any wind at all. I realised I was probably best going out on my 8.5 Blade IV, as there was not enough power for me to consistently boost airs. I was asked to do some riding for a TV crew, however the wind was getting worse and worse, so all I could do was the odd pop shov it and flip from the pop of the board.

   

We spent the evening catching up on sleep, as we had been travelling for an entire day.

Day 2- We arrived at the beach around midday as we were all fairly tired still. The wind was stronger than the previous day so I decided to take my Sabre back out and give it another go. This time there was more power and a sweet kicker and rail to help me boost bigger airs. I took full advantage of the kicker and was practicing some new variations of handlepasses with my kite as low as possible. I managed to land some sweet flat 3s with lots of different grabs and even landed some flat 3s off the rail.

Day 3- After another long sleep we arrived late at the beach again, however this time the winds were much stronger. Again I took out my Sabre and was tricking for David Ursell who was there to film his latest DVD- Push Kiting. I managed to nail some nice handlepasses and an unhooked 540 foot out to blind pass. The wind continued to pick up throughout the day so I decided to have my first go on a 15m Atom. The Atom was boosting really high and I was pulling off as many kiteloops and big old school moves as possible.

   

Richard Boudia and Simon Mitchell were on the scene each day capturing some awesome freestyle pictures in the wicked Mediterranean surroundings.

Day 4- Monday we woke up with the 14+ hour drive staring us in the face. We spent the morning in the sun on the patio looking out onto the Mediterranean only a few steps away. Knowing there was no wind forecast for the morning we went into the event village (which was basically the town centre!) and checked out all the stalls for the last time, saying cheers to the guys at The Windstation (the local Flexifoil shop) and managing to catch some wicked freestyle parkour & BMX riding before we headed off to the spot to check for wind and say cheers to everyone.

   

Massive thanks to:
Pete from Mellow.
Nicolas Falcou for letting us stay at his grandmothers villa.

Pictures © Simon Mitchell, Richard Boudia and Nigel Crook.