18 year old, Sam Dickinson from Hayling Island describes what is like to compete for the European Championship near his home town
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00:18 Hi, my name is Sam Dickinson. We're here at the Kiteurfing Europeans.
00:22 Today should be the third day of racing, but unfortunately we missed the last two days due to the wind.
00:27 So today we're going to have the first day of qualifying. We've done six races for all the fleets and it should be a good day.
00:32 The past couple of days, when we should have been racing, we've been getting all our kit, making sure it's in tip-top condition.
00:38 And then before that, we've been making sure we get plenty of time out on home waters, training, making sure we're in good condition for the event.
00:46 You can train in multiple different ways. You've also got onshore stuff in the gym, making sure your fitness is good,
00:52 making sure your kit is prepared well. And then on the water stuff, we've got split things, two categories, so it's like boat on boat stuff.
00:59 So that's when you're really close to other competitors and you need to move yourself slightly with them without getting tangled.
01:06 And then we have sort of your own independent speed stuff, which we still train with other competitors.
01:11 We just do have someone to line up against, give you an idea of how fast you're going.
01:16 But yeah, they're both super important. I can't say one's more important than the other, but you need to have both of them if you want to be up there in the race.
01:24 So obviously for us, we're a bit different to all the other sailing classes. We've got lines between us and our kites.
01:30 They're usually between 10 and 14 metres long. There's quite a lot of lines to get tangled up in and we have just over 30 people on a start line.
01:40 So yeah, we're all super close and fine with each other, but in the odd case it can go wrong and we do get tangled.
01:47 Obviously that's race over for us. We get things called discards, which means we don't have to count a certain number of races for an event.
01:54 But yeah, usually you want to use them for races that didn't go so well as opposed to ones you tangled in.
02:00 So what's that like when you do get tangled in? I mean, what goes through your mind if, assuming that has happened?
02:06 Yeah, it happens often in a fleet. So most races you'll see someone get tangled. I've had maybe one or two over the past year.
02:16 Obviously if you can stay out of them, your results can be better. But yeah, it's more frustrating, especially if you're in a good place in the race.
02:26 And it's sort of race over, that's sort of it. And then as soon as you're tangled, it's about trying to get out of the tangle and make sure you're ready to go for the next race again, so it doesn't affect you more than one race.
02:38 You can see the whole kite fleet here and easternly it's just really cool. We're used to seeing everyone in beaches in Italy and Spain, but to be here is something new for us I think.
02:48 It makes it a little bit more grounded, a little bit more local. Yeah, exactly. It's where I went to school for the past two years and having a mate at Portsmouth who's going to come and watch. It's pretty cool.
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