We have seen the Point-7 Black Team training in slalom in the last months on the island of Tenerife. Lately some FW pictures of them have appeared on the same spot, so we have asked team captain, Andrea Cucchi, some updates.
Andrea Cucchi. This year we havefor our team to train together, work as a real team. So we got all our team to come over to Tenerife to our winter headquaters. At the same time, Mark Hosegood was starting the Wind Academy here: a system open to everyone to train slalom with marks and starts as real racing. So with the Back Team we decided to join his format… The slalom training is 3 times a week so during the non slalom training, the team takes time to go testing FW sails and masts when the conditions are suitable. One week, the wind was too weak to train slalom, so we pushed Mark to try a FW training. It was actually pretty good, but we had only 2 FW boards with us. We ended up match racing. The Wind Academy is just born, but I’m sure Mark will make some plans also for this discipline for the future, and let the FW class know his plans.
Regarding our Formula plans with Point-7, we have this year two good formula windsurfing riders, Alberto Menegatti and Maciek Rutkowski. We pushed our development to supply them with the best possible sails as we want to see them obtaining great results at the next international championships.
This year we will only use our Italian production facility to produce the Formula sails. This was chosen so that we can actually supply the latest development also to our clients. The final sails are now ready from the end of January, and since then only we started supplying the sails. Now the waiting list is about 2 weeks, so it’s working out good.
I personally love Formula Windsurfing, I did not manage to race in 2012 due to too many things going on, but I was often testing with the rest of the team . The last event I did in Formula, was the Master World Championships in 2011, which I won. I will try to follow my team and race with them at the next international events.
Andrea Cucchi
www.point-7.com