After a great result at the opening stop of the 2016 PWA Slalom World Tour in Korea, Lena Erdil went on to win the 2016 IFCA Slalom World Champion title in Brac, Croatia, from the 6th to the 11th of June. Despite an open wound, Lena managed to grab the Womens' title over Maja Dziarnowska, Maelle Guilbaud and Maria Andres. Read her report below.

It was a little bit of a last minute decision to come to this event since it's not a PWA event, but with so few World Cup events on the calendar for girls this year and the place looking super nice I decided to attend anyway. At the skippers' meeting we were informed that after many years without, the IFCA was going to award an official world champion title for women at this event and that was obviously an extra motivation to do especially well here.

We got super nice wind on the first day of the event with consistent 15 to 20 knots. I was on my medium equipment, iSonic 97 and 7.1m² all day and feeling really fast. Unfortunately, I cut my foot pretty badly after the first two races. I managed however to ignore the cut and hope for the best and was racing the last two races with my foot open… I was feeling so good on my equipment with the conditions we had that I didn’t want the cut to stop me and luckily it didn't. I won both heats and both my finals that day, giving me a nice advantage and a good start to the event. Immediately after racing I got the wound stitched.

The next day with wind was super light and the start line was super biased for the boat so with 10 girls in the final it was quite tricky to get a clean start. With my foot wrapped up and in a massive boot in massive footstraps (but still getting wet) my position on the board was really not ideal for light-wind sailing. On top of that, I also broke the middle batten of my sail before the races of the day which was specially bad for the light-wind conditions. However, at the end of the day I still managed to keep my lead in the rankings with my two firsts from the first day and it turned out to be the last races of the event.

So after two days of racing and three days on the water I am super happy to bring home the 2016 IFCA Slalom World Champion title to Turkey! It was a really special moment for me to hear the Turkish national hymn on the podium playing for me on the closing ceremony! Big Congrats to Maja [Dziarnowska] and Maelle [Guilbaud] for second and third and generally really good racing!

It was great to see such a big women participation at this event and I’m glad that I had the chance to see Croatia and the beautiful island of Brac. Special thanks to the event organizers from Zoo Station and of course all the sponsors. And of course big love to all my sponsors and family without who I wouldn’t be able to be where I am now!

- Lena Erdil (TUR-33)

- Pictures by Bartosz Wozniak & Nikola Brizk / IFCA -