Mario Rodwald - a German Kiteboarder

With the Best Trick the weekend started really good for me and it also finished great. Friday we did a few races and in the overall ranking I could reach the second place behind Armin Harich. It was pretty funny to go on full speed against the old guys but the big board is also pretty hard to handle - so everyone had pain in his legs in the evening…

Saturday started with some good conditions and we began with the freestyle event. My twelve was good until the final and I could show some moves. Again the last heat was against Stefan Permien and this time it was a close one again. The crowd on the beach was screaming and I could win the singles. In the evening we had a nice pogramm with One Fine Day and a DJ afterwards.

So today it was a bit more relaxed for me, I was in the last  heat and had enough time to rig all my kites. On the beach were quite a lot of people, Norman played some cool songs and we saw some nice tricks from Rick, Jan, Bubbi, Tim…

In the final I was super motivated to catch the titel again and had a pretty solid heat with switch tricks, Frontmobe blind, Kiteloop HP - enough to win.

Thanks a lot to Enno for taking pictures and to everybody for helping me on the beach! And thanks even more to my parents and my sister for helping me so much to be German Vize-Champion in Race and German Champion Champion in Fresstyle 2008.

Tomorrow my sister, my mum and me are going to fly to Greece - hopefully I can update some nice stuff from there soon!

At the moment I am spending my time on Germanys richest island Sylt. Last weekend we had the Kitesurf-Trophy here and it was a bit chaotic for me but in the end it all turned out good. On Friday we did some heats in light conditions and Saturday morning the weather changed and we had to ride our heats in strong, gusty winds.

In the final against Stefan I was to lit on my nine so I tried to change to seven. A huge gust came and my father flew away with the kite. (Later I saw it on TV - pretty funny!) Luckyly I could manage a double HP and a Frontmobe blind in the last minute…On Sunday Rick had his day and he came all the way up. He did some huge huge tricks on his 8 that day so I had to ride against him. He did a nice Mobe and some big Loops, but I won that heat with some save tricks like Slim, 313, Flat3…

So I finished first and now I just do some days of vacations with some friends from my hometown. Giving some kite lessions, some party and trying some new tricks….