Anytime you beat Johnny multiple times at an Olympic demonstration event is a big deal! Make no mistake, Johnny is the Man right now in racing. And congrats to Bernie for getting some bullets in Mexico. According to Damo, Johnny had no chance against him in the 6-8 knot races on the first day either upwind or downwind. Then they started trading bullets in the remainder of races which were windier with 11m and 13m kites.

That is very odd I have been following all the events and don't remember Damien ever been able to break into the top 5. Kinda seems like he is off the radar at this point.

Kind of hard to break the top 5 if your are not there....
The Only events he has attended this year are La Ventana where he was 4th and the Olympic contest where he would have been 1st if they added up all the scores but they do not do that there because all of the races where different disciplines like trying bunches of different courses of slalom and courses made similar to regular courseraces. The did box courses, Americas Cup courses and really mixed in allot of different stuff to give the ISAF guys a chance to see what kiters can do and they put on a great show. Johnny and Damien also went out to the other courses for the other classes like Tornados, 470's, etc to match up and whooped up on them. So the ISAF and other sailors were pretty impressed with the kiting class performance.

btw congratulations on your scores Alex you been killing it.

Thanks Stefaans, it has been fun racing with the top three guys. I actually beat Johnny, Adam and Bernie to the top mark a couple times in Puerta Vallarta but they worked me over the whole course. These guys are amazing downwind and they hike out like they are going upwind. Hard to learn that here in Maui cause we are just flying downwind and not trying to make more power just trying not to eat it on a 7 or 9m! Riccardo Lecesse is starting to get really fast too. I only beat him a couple times around the course in 10 or 11 races. He has pretty good speed and technique downwind as well. Most of the distance gained or lead changes had been downwind during that event which was surprising to me. AA

Yeah Team AmeriKa is fast! Johnny had no one to play with last night in the Bay, a whole different level. The average racer was at windward when Johnny was going back up wind from the down wind gate.

Get back to the point of this thread, There are 3 boards that are not falling apart here in the SF where we get 40+- people on the line for races. Mike's, Alex's and Nil's.