The Asian Windsurfing Tour will reach its
annual climax at the Ulsan International
Windsurfing Championship in Korea in
June. A fleet of over 200 windsurfers,
including stars like Micah Buzianis, Antoine
Albeau, Britain’s Dan Ellis and Jimmy Diaz
are expected to attend. Also attending will
be the newly crowned AWT Champion
Masato Ogawa from Japan. Normally the
final event of the season would be an
exciting finale to decide the overall
champion, but this season Ogawa has
shown such consistency that he is
untouchable and for him, the Ulsan
Championships will be a victory parade.
Last year Dan Ellis won the Tour. This is
only the second year that the Ulsan
Championships have been held but they
quickly established themselves as a major
event in world windsurfing. A fleet of 200
competitors, 22 countries represented, live
TV broadcasts in Korea, global broadcasts
to over 170 million homes – pretty
impressive stuff.
Ulsan is a major industrial area with a
million inhabitants and home to the
Hyundai Corporation. Just outside the city
itself is JinHa, a sleepy fishing village with
twin horseshoe bays which plays host to
city dwellers in the hot summer months. In
June it gets cross on-shore winds of 15-20
knots which are ideal for the downwind
slalom that is the staple of AWT
competition. Adding interest at the event
this year are two other competitions - an
Olympic RS:X division and a kiting contest.
The competition takes place in the first
week of June
