PWA Events 2019

Geil, letzter Wave Event in Maui!! Und Freestyle in Bonaire ist sicher auch hammer!!

5 Waveevents hätten auch mal einen echt guten Allrounder als Sieger, obwohl ich vermute es entscheidet sich wieder zwischen 2-3 konstanten Typen

Mal abwarten wieviele Events wieder aus dem Kalender gestrichen werden

... eben...

5-7 slalomevents / saison ist schon sehr sehr dürftig

schade

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“Due to unexpected complications with the funding for the event, we have been left with no choice but to postpone the 2019 Portugal Grand Slam until next year. We know it will be a big disappointment to many of you who were looking forward to the event this year, but the indications are positive that it will go ahead in 2020. The final disciplines for the Korean PWA World Cup have been confirmed, with a full World Cup taking place, including Slalom for men and women, and foil for women only.” (PWA)

Noch was von der PWA:

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Dear Fellow Competitors,

Glad to see everyone quite busy preparing for 2019 World Tour. I see most of you have been hard at work preparing for the upcoming season. Since we last saw each other in Sylt we have had numerous developments that we would like to update you on.

First and foremost, I wanted to express our full gratitude to Vivienne Masters for all her hard work and dedication over the past 18 years with the PWA. We wish her the best of luck moving forward and thank her for all her work behind the scenes that many of you were not able to see.

I also wanted to welcome the new members of the management board including Werner Gnigler who was voted into the management board by the industry in July and Lena Erdil who was voted in at Sylt by all of you. We are confident that with their many years of experience on the tour and in the sport, that they will help contribute to the well being and growth of the PWA. The current management board stands as follows:

Dieter Van der Eyken: Sailor Representative

Graham Ezzy: Sailor Representative

Lena Erdil: Sailor Representative

Craig Gertenbach (Fanatic): Industry Representative

Svein Rasmussen (Starboard): Industry Representative

Werner Gnigler (JP Australia): Industry Representative

Jimmy Diaz: Sailor representative, Chairman of the Board

The PWA, a non-profit organization, is run by this management board which oversees the PWA Tour Manager, Rich Page, who in turn oversees the day to day operations of the PWA. Rich acts on behalf of the management board in overseeing all aspects of the tour. The industry is represented by the 3 members listed above, while the sailors are represented by the remaining four sailors on the management board. Furthermore, the sailors have representation with their individual committees comprised of the Women’s Committee, Slalom Committee, Wave Committee, Freestyle Committee, and Foil Committees. We have set up these committees in order to facilitate communication between the sailors and the management board in addressing any sailor concerns, suggestions, and improvements to standards and competition formats. If you wish to contact you committee members then please contact info@pwaworldtour.com

In addition to the new management board members, I would like to welcome our new team member, Marije Elgersma who will be focussing on social media and marketing support. Marije has been managing the successful SUP11 City Tour in the Netherlands and has been involved in numerous marketing projects especially within the watersports industry. She will be focusing her efforts in improving the image of the PWA, the sailors, and the events, and increasing the media value overall to make the sailors, events, and PWA, in general, more lucrative for sponsorship investment. This year we will make a more focused and concentrated effort in unifying each sailor’s and companies’ social media power in the hopes of delivering to a bigger and wider audience. We will be asking for more cooperation and participation in creating a strong synergy which will help make us all stronger. Paraphrasing Aristotle, we are greater than the sum of our parts.

By now, you have all seen a preliminary version of the 2019 calendar. It looks like it will be quite the busy year and we are still working on additional possibilities which could be added later in the season. The goal has been to have 7 events per discipline which adds up to quite a lot of events throughout the year if we are able to accomplish that. We have been also working hard on finalizing all the new rule changes which are outlined below. It has been quite the effort implementing Foiling as a full discipline for a large variety of reasons and we hope the steps we are taking are the correct ones in allowing Foiling to grow while keeping Slalom as the strong discipline it has become. Foiling is still in its’ very early stages so we will keep trying to adapt in the best way possible as equipment evolves.

In 2019 we will keep pushing with our efforts to build a bigger base. This includes the organization of Youth events as well as qualifier events. The 2nd Victor Fernandez PWA Youth World Cup has already been successfully completed at the beginning of the year and this was the first of numerous youth events for 2019. On this note, I want to commend Victor for his efforts with the Youth and also to the various sailors like Taty, Tonky, Vincent, Cagla, Daida, Iballa, and Dany amongst others, that have taken it upon themselves to really push the sport forward with our youth. The impact our involvement as PWA sailors has with the youth should not be underestimated for the effects it will have on the growth and popularity of our sport. I encourage all of you to find a way to involve more kids in our sport.

The qualifying tours are also starting to take shape. For Freestyle we have formalized our cooperation with the EFPT Tour and we will count the best 4 results from the EFPT events, of €10k prize money and over, towards the 2020 qualification. For slalom we are finalizing our agreement with an event in Croatia which will be the first qualifying event of the season. We are expecting to add 2 or 3 more qualifying events whose results will apply for the 2020 season. We have been having ongoing discussions with IWT and while this is more complicated for a variety of reasons, we hope to be able to establish something there also in the near future.

In the update included with this email, we will go into more detail about the various changes. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact us or any of the committee members.

One more thing I would like to add. Over the past several months I have been following many of you. It never ceases to amaze me what a unique group of athletes we are. Over the past thirty years I have been able to see many changes in the sport and also the athletes. Many of you have really stepped up your game and what I see in front of me is a wild bunch of dedicated professional athletes who are able to combine not only the skills and efforts it takes to be a professional athlete, but also the many roles it takes to survive in this relatively small sport. I don’t know many other sports where you have to fill so many roles besides being an athlete…photographer, video editor, social media manager, travel agent, sports agent, etc, etc. As I have said before, the fact that you are reading this email is a testament to your dedication and never give up attitude that has led to you having this position in life. I know the journey is difficult and full of unknowns, but I think we can all agree that it is one hell of a journey!

I wish you all the best of luck for 2019. May we fill it with spectacular events, images and memories for all to enjoy.

All the best,

Jimmy Diaz

PWA President

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