Well, so back from our little trip to the warm and sunny south of france! ….ok I lie, the place was wetter and colder than Ireland!!! It rained for the first 2 days of our trip straight. The wind was super strong, super gusty and cross offshore with near zero degrees wind chill! Following our arrival in Luecate at 1am on the Friday 10th April we recieved an incredible welcoming by Buzz the owner of the local party bar/nightclub with some great hospitality and free shots. We also woke our good friend Ian from his deep sleep in his van outside the Bar and dragged him up to the club to join us. After celebrating the beginning of our first PKRA world championship event the first day of competition had unfotunately not enough wind, but did have torrential rain, so the competition was postponed untill the following day. The next day was 40+knots mega gusty icy cold cross offshore winds that were nearly impossible to ride in. Myself and sean were in the first few heat early that morning as we had to qualify for the main event. Sean was up first and we pumped his 7m only to find it had a leaky leading edge tube and only stayed inflated for 15 minutes or so. His lines were tangled pretty bad when we went to set the kite up and unfortunately he ended up missing his heat beacause of his lines being in a birds nest. I was up next, and had only a 9m and 11m with me. I realistically needed a 7m or even a 5m! So i borrowed seans 7m and we got the lines untangled just in time for my heat. I went out, and just basically began laughing to myself at how bad the conditions were. Having never flown seans kite before either didnt make it any easier! So i cruised over and back about 7 times trying to do a few tricks but never really got the chance between the other guys in the heat getting in the way and the super gusty winds messing me up. I tried a kungfoo but got hit by a lull so only ended up about 4 foot in the air and crashed. I also went for a megaloop that also ended up being too low and near level with the kite so that also ending in a decent wipeout. After that i said to myself i was done and the end of heat whistle went and i went ashore, unable to feel my hands and most of my body from the cold! Needless to say i didnt progress through to the next round so myself and sean didnt qualify for the main PKRA event which was unfortunate.
A massive congrats goes to Jennifer Kinnear the lady of the Irish team who finish 9th overall in the womens catagory! She put up a good show and had a blast in her first world championship event so we will be lookign forward to seeing her continue her good results in the next event she can attend! You did us proud Jen!
So having missed out on the main event, Sean and myself still went kiting a few times and watched some of the top guys and girls in the world strut their stuff on the water. We also in true Irish sportsmen style, enjoyed and supported each evening enterainment that had been organised but unfortunately was not very popular with the rest of teh competitors, who were always in bed early. Sporting our Ireland tee shirts and Hats we represented our country well and got plenty of attention because of it! Word out to everyone we met there and especially the insane french Slingshot team kings of the party! 
We’ll be hitting another PKRA tour stop this summer so stay tuned to find out. The irish team are convinced we can do better in the next one so the world better prepare themselves once again!
Eamo
