Freestyle Pro Tour Paros - Day 3
by Freestyle Pro Tour 1 Jul 16:00 BST
Performing moves with 9 sailors side by side proves to be quite tricky - smaller moves were being crashed a lot more than expected! © Freestyle Pro Tour
Day 3 at the FPT Paros 2025 was a slower one - with a lay day with no wind anticipated and a late skippers meeting at 13:00 to assess the conditions, there wasn't much initially filling up the schedule.
However after around an hour, the wind unexpectedly began picking up. With the single and double eliminations concluded, the judges planned out a surprise format for our competitors to complete in the short window that the forecast was predicting to be windy.
The format in question was a Supercross-esque structure of competition, where riders started at the event site, their gear laying on the beach by the water. As the horn went off, the riders would run down to the beach, pick up their gear and beachstart. From there their task was simple - stick one of a list of five moves on the way out, on the outward mark, and on the way in. The movelist included a Spock, Kono, Culo, Eslider and Forward loop - each move being fair game, with the deciding factor being who arrived back at the event site fastest.
The tough part? All 9 riders on the water at one time.
A large crowd gathered on the beach as the crazy action commenced and the riders sprinted off onto the beach and chaos ensued on the water, with all riders running into the water and taking off side by side racing off to the mark. The move at the mark is where things got chatotic, with riders crashing next to one another as the field pushed through and returned to the beach. The final sprints back from the beach to the event site were also decisive, as multiple position changes also happened after the riders had already dismounted their gear.
The final rankings for the 3 qualifying eliminations looked as follows:
1. Lenart Neubauer
2. Sokratis Saraliotis
3. Yentel Caers
4. Adam Sims
5. Bodhi Kempen
6. Takumi Moriya
7. Tigo Kort
8. Felix Bittdorfer
9. Yoad Shaham
1. Lennart Neubauer
2. Yentel Caers
3. Tigo Kort
4. Bodhi Kempen
5. Adam Sims
6. Sokratis Saraliotis
7. Takumi Moriya
8. Yoad Shaham
9. Felix Bittdorfer
1. Lennart Neubauer
2. Yentel Caers
3. Takumi Moriya
4. Adam Sims
5. Sokratis Saraliotis
6. Bodhi Kempen
7. Tigo Kort
8. Felix Bittdorfer
9. Yoad Shaham
Once the 3 eliminations had concluded, it was time for a final round, with Adam Sims, Yentel Caers and Lennart Neubauer qualifying. It was a close battle, with Sims coming third, Yentel Caers in second and Lennart taking the victory in the end thanks to being one of the few riders who rigged up a 5.2 sail - a wise choice where speed was priority number 1.
Tomorrow the forecast looks on again - and the plan is shaping up to be even more unexpected and exciting than today, with competition in two exciting new work-in-progress formats. Stay tuned to the Freestyle Pro Tour social channels and follow the action here on freestyleprotour.com to make sure you don't miss anything and keep up with the action!