Team Garuda World Cup report
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World Champions Overdrive  Gerard Clement  Garuda and Joanna  Field Director Kathy Jarvis  Pictures © alive-tv

Garuda with Masque UL  Garuda and a nice burst  Garuda at practice  Garuda at practice  Pictures © Stefan Scheider

Moves on the ground  Is Torsten looking for his kite?  Moves on the ground  Pictures © Stefan Scheider

Rüdiger  Torsten alias "Schmiddel"  Thomas  Pictures © Stefan Scheider


Garuda and their Masque Kites  Garuda working on their equipment  Megateam 1  Megateam 2  Crash at Megateam  Pictures © Mark Collewijn


Garuda with Masque UL  Garuda with Masque UL  Pictures © Kotaro Fujimori



Thank you Gerard Clement and the city of Berck for organizing a great festival!

First of all we have to say that we are very happy about the 4th place this year! This year there were 8 teams competing - 3 from France, 3 from UK, 1 from US and 1 from Germany. The second invited team from Germany, Team Watnu, was not able to come this year. Also Team Speed from Japan, which has competed last year, was not able to come. The weather was nice, blue skies but cold - especially in the morning time. The members of Team SPI from US were freezing all the time, their home is in southern Texas which has 36 degrees at this time! So it was hard for them to fly in temperatures around 2 degrees in the morning. To be honest also Garuda was wearing gloves one day morning.....

We had a fantastic and successful week in Berck and lot of fun with all other teams. Every night we had a meeting at the "VIP" tent. There were funny things like Karaoke and an improved "German evening" which was done by the German single line kiters. It was very friendly and no one was talking bad about the war. It showed us that there is sport and politics on the other hand. Yes, there was good applause from the spectators and all other teams soon as the English and US teams came in the arena. No bad words or whistles.

A German TV team (alive-tv from Essen) came over for 3 days and took lot of pictures of us and our flying. To give interviews 10 minutes before and right after our routines was something new but nice. We hope on some good pictures and this may help our sport itself.

It is a real challenge to fly at the competition field in Berck. The field is in front the promenade with some buildings behind. Most time the wind is coming over the buildings and bumpy winds are making it hard to fly a precise routine. As in last year around noon there was a wind shift and mostly it came from seaside then. To fly the precision routine on first position in the flying order could make you crazy - precision routine was at 10AM and the ballet routine at 2:30PM. Every day we had a new flying order which was established at the computer.

Our Masque Kites from Lé Atelier were so brilliant and one reason why we got an great 4th place!


Place Team Day 1 Day 2 Day 3 Final
1 Overdrive (FR) 80.82 82.20 81.10 81.65
2 Tame Bird (FR) 72.03 79.12 68.02 75.57
3 Element Air (FR) 72.60 71.71 78.22 75.41
4 Garuda (GER) 58.33 64.66 70.52 67.59
5 Scratch Bunnies (UK) 58.65 61.72 63.37 62.55
6 Matrix Management (UK) 56.25 63.83 59.97 61.90
7 Flame (UK) 44.73 47.08 62.14 54.61
8 SPI (US) 42.40 20.17 52.84 47.62

The final standings were determined by combining each team's best two out of three days of competition.