La Mancha's International Slalom - 10th October 2004 To try and beat the wind, we decided to start at 8am today. The lake was still in darkness a little before 8 and as the sun came up, the lake was covered in a thin layer of mist and the air temperature really rather chilly. Open men skied first to try to give them a chance with better conditions than they had had the day before. Glenn Campbell was third off the dock, I don't think he was awake yet and I'm sure the top skiers are not used to skiing so early in the morning. However, he skied 13, 12 and 11 with his normal ease and looked good on the 10.75m rope, but lost concentration slightly scoring 5 buoys - a very good start. The water stayed quite flat for a while, although the wind picked up slightly giving a head wind on the first pass. When Ivan Morros went out at 14, he decided to skip the 13m pass and come back at 12 with the tail wind, this he ran easily and then decided to skip the 11.25m pass and ski 10.75 into the wind, a big gamble which I have never seen anyone do before. I have also never seen anyone opt up twice in the same round! Ivan managed to run the 10.75m pass pleasing the spectators greatly. Unfortunately the tail wind proved too much of a problem on 10.25 and a bad gate meant that Ivan skied inside buoy 1, scoring 0 @ 10.25m. 8 skiers in total skied into 10.75m providing some very excellent skiing. The other skiers being: Richard Odin (3.5 @ 10.75), Michele Gallegra (2.5 @ 10.75), Clint Stadlbaur (2 @ 10.75), Romain Chambaud (1.5 @ 10.75), Fabrizio Merlo (1 @ 10.75) and Thierry Malhomme (0.5 @ 10.75). By the time the ladies skied, the wind had got a little stonger and so the conditions were really not great for good scores. Cristina Botas skied the best in this round with 4 @13m, still a very respectable score. By the start of the second round, the wind was again up to the strength that it had been yesterday. It was sunny though causing a few problems for the boat driver Ricardo, as he had trouble seeing the course from the start jetty. The jury tower had been made a little safer today, so it could withstand the strong wind, and the round was continued as planned. Some of the skiers decided not to ski in the round, but some just decided to go and give it a go and enjoy it anyway. A lot of the skiers started on a very short line length, just to see if they could do it and there was a lot of shouting and laughter on the jetty from everyone. The best score in Open men in the second round was Romain Chambaud with 0.5 @ 12m. But, I think that the best score of the round had to be from dauphin Duarte Mota who scored an incredible 1 @ 55/12m. I think he was encouraged a lot by the promise of kit-kats if he got a good score! All in all a very good competition, despite the misfortune of the very unusual bad weather. I, for one, am looking forward to the same competition next year. Hopefully, the weather will be a little kinder then and a lot of 10.25m scores will be seen.