August 9, 2024

Enrico Marotti 3rd – PWA Fuerte Slalom ‘24

Enrico makes it to the PWA Fuerte podium again!

Photos: John Carter / PWA Worldtour

PWA Fuerteventura slalom event – July 25 to August 03 2024

The second part of the Fuerte event were two performance disciplines – Slalom X and Foil Slalom.
Most of our riders focussed on foil slalom this year, which is why you saw way more JP in this discipline than in the new Slalom X competition. Enrico Marotti was the best of them taking the 3rd place on the podium !
Foil Slalom JP rider rankings:
# 3 – Enrico Marotti – CRO-401
#11 – Nico Prien – GER-7
#19 – Pierre Macquaert – FRA-945
#25 – Jacopo Gavioil – ITA-345
#29 – Daniel Riegler – AUT-7
#30 – Seven Feuer – ITA-86
#32 – Cyril Evrard – BEL-250
#35 – Bruno Martini – ITA-160

Slalom X – JP rider rankings
# 7 – Bruno Martini – ITA-160
#10 – Nico Prien – GER-7
#15 – Pierre Macquaert – FRA-945

Enrico Marotti CRO-401:
For Enrico, the event was over before it even started: a month earlier he had broken his wrist and the doctor’s diagnosis was that he would not be able to do any sport for a while and would have to wear a cast. But Enrico did not want to give up and continued sailing with the cast and pain. He realized that foiling was not as hard on the wrist as the too painful fin slalom. In the time before the event, he adapted his plans and decided to compete exclusively in foil slalom and forego the fin slalom.

On Fuerte, the first elimination started with a huge disappointment: starting too early led to the worst possible ranking.

But from then on, everything changed: Enrico finished the second elimination in 2nd place – a real confidence boost, because in every subsequent elimination CRO-401 made it to the final! This of course came with many wins in the earlier qualifying heats…

This is what the Croatian had to say:

“The PWA world cup on Fuerteventura –as always– was really challenging event. I am happy how I performed in those hard conditions and how everything turned out. I started event with a disqualification in first elimination due to early start. Despite this setback I was still fighting for the event victory until the very last race – which is pleasing to hear.

In the end, this third place is something I am happy with because it was just over a month ago that I broke my hand…..

Now, I am looking forward to the next race!”

Bruno Martini ITA-160 – 7th

Last year, Bruno finished this event as the best JP slalom rider and everybody knows that Bruno favours fin slalom over foiling. So, his expectations were high. He reaches incredible speeds and hardly anyone is faster than him. It doesn’t get boring when he is sailing!
In this event, ITA-160 started off with an over-early in Foil Slalom, like most of his team mates. Unfortunately, this was not his only one: He had half as many early starts than there were eliminations overall. This obviously kills all your chances for a good ranking and resulted in a disasterous 35th place in Foil Slalom.
In Slalom X Marini had a better start and with good positions in qualifying runs. But then misfortune struck again and again: another early start, and a brutal crash on the speed run and another one when sailing out through the swell. If you add in small gybing errors, then you know that even the fastest rider can’t make it onto the podium. Bruno was gutted.
Nevertheless, the 7th place in Slalom X still is a great result – just like every top-10 place in such hard-core slalom conditions.
Fingers crossed for the next event, Bruno!

Nico Prien G-7 – 11th

Nico finished outside the top 10 (11th place) in the Foil Slalom, which surprised everyone. Due to the steadily improving results in recent times, expectations were high and therefore the disappointment even greater. Prien was “not amused”! G-7 knows that “the speed is there” because he was leading many runs. He knows that he has the potential to qualify for every elimination final. So, the prerequisites are good. But if you make mistakes, fate punishes you with bad luck – on top. Prien mentioned that he simply made too many tactical mistakes. He couldn’t avoid getting caught up in other riders’ crashes, where he either got knocked down or tangled up in them, or he had to sail wide around them and lost places. Over-earlies didn’t help either. All these things added up with the result that he could only make three elimination finals. Very frustrating when you know that you are not living up to your potential.

These unfortunate situations continued in Slalom X, where he finished 10th despite similar setbacks.

The solution for now: Forget this event and move on!
Patience, hard work and focus are the upcoming targets.

Pierre Macquaert FRA-945 – 15th

Finally ! What a great progress for Pierre: In the past he often finished in 5th place and just missed qualifying for semi-finals or finals. But not this time ! In Slalom X he managed to reach two semi-finals and two finals – for the very first time ever. His best result was a #6th place in the fifth elimination. This is a huge step forward in his career and FRA-945 really can be proud about it.

This boosted his motivation for the Foil Slalom event where he was almost as good finishing 19th.

Congratulations, Pierre.

The picture below shows Bruno leading the pack on the speed run and Pierre closely behind on the way to qualify.

Other fast JP foil racers to mention are Jacopo Gavioil – ITA-345, Sem Stroosma NED-450, Daniel Riegler – AUT-7, Sven Feuer – ITA-86 and Cyril Evrard – BEL-250 who all branded the fleets in pink .

Thank you, team !