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AMADO VRIESWIJK: NEED FOR SPEED

Amado Vrieswijk is fast developing into one the best racers in the world, so we caught up with the Bonairean to find out where his love of racing originated and what his aspirations are for the future.

Words: Amado Vrieswijk // Photos: John Carter / pwaworldtour.com

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PWA OR iQ

I made the decision to stop my iQFOiL campaign a week before the first PWA event in Lake Garda as it was either going to be a whole year of iQ and no PWA or vice versa. It came down to doing one or the other. I started training for iQ two years ago and the racing has been amazing. I think I placed 9th in my first race back in Silvaplana, Switzerland. Then I got right into it. I went to Holland, and I was invited to training camps and I was heavily involved. The iQ is such a gear battle and everything around the racing is just not my style. The racing itself I loved, but it was just too hard. You need full financial support, so I would have needed the support from the Federation in Holland, which would have meant dropping my sponsors; Future Fly, Brunotti and Severne. The other option was to keep doing what I love to do, and what I have done since the beginning, the Slalom & Freestyle PWA World Tours.

COURSE RACING

The Olympic style racing is just very close racing. It was very technical and you really need to read the wind all the time. There is so much more to it and you have to be on top of every aspect of the racing. Also, the discipline was completely new to me because I have no sailing background. I was always about speed and freestyling. The iQ was a whole new side of windsurfing for me to learn, which was great fun, and an awesome experience, but in the end, it was not for me personally. iQ is all about tuning, so you are basically testing the entire time as there are so many parts on the foils and sails that you have to be on top of. There can be differences in the equipment, even though it is a one design class. After each event you would have to change your sail because once you’ve raced on it for one event it can already lose is spark. You were basically testing, testing, testing for each week of racing that you were competing. I love testing and fine tuning, but it simply costs too much money to remain competitive, so without full financial support it wasn’t possible for me to pursue the iQ route anymore. If you receive the full support, then you can go to the Olympics with the chance of a medal, but I would rather not go if I knew I didn’t really have a chance of competing for top honours. It was a great challenge and I loved it, but that chapter is closed.

LAST MINUTE

Like I say, it was not until one week before Lake Garda in Italy that I decided I was going to compete on the PWA. I hadn’t even touched my slalom equipment during the winter, so I really had to fine tune everything right before the event, which definitely put me back a few steps last season. I am not quite on top of all of my equipment at the moment, so that will be my focus for next year, so that I will be fully tuned and completely ready for the season.

FOCUS

I have always loved speed. I started windsurfing with slalom, but when I saw Tonky, Taty [Frans] and Kiri [Thode] all jumping around on freestyle gear, I decided I also want to do that, so I went full power into freestyle, but I have always been into slalom. In the early days, I would rock up to events, rig and go, I would not train for racing. I was more focused on freestyle, but now this year will be the first time that I will change the focus only to slalom. My bodyweight is now tuned for racing, don’t get me wrong I still love freestyle, but my weight is a very big disadvantage at times. Especially when competing in lighter winds. In Fuerteventura the wind was strong this summer and my freestyle was still working well, but when the wind became lighter, you could clearly see I was struggling.

FOIL

I love foil racing because everything is so new. I am deeply involved in the research and development for both my sail and board sponsors and everything is still so fresh. I think we are just getting started as to where the limits of foil racing are. We are trying lots of new equipment and still coming up with new ideas. Some don’t seem logical at all, but sometimes they work, and sometimes they don’t. It is incredibly satisfying when you make a breakthrough.

FIN

If the wind is strong, I will still race on the fin. In Pozo last year I did go out with the fin on my small board when it was absolutely nuking, but I can’t see myself racing on a 7.8m or 8.8m with a fin on the big boards anymore to be honest.

LIVING ON THE EDGE

The foil is so much faster. People are saying it is easy, but try going out there with some waves or strong winds. It is still physical, but it’s also a real mental game as the amount of mental focus required is significantly higher on the foil compared to the fin. After racing in Fuerteventura, I was physically and mentally exhausted. From the start to the finish of every single race you need to have maximum focus or else you crash. You are constantly on the edge and I love the adrenaline rush it provides. I love to be on that edge and finding the limits of what is possible. As it is still so new you are pushing beyond the limits of what your gear is capable of at the moment, which is why so many riders have these big wobbles and crashes.

REFLECTION

This year has been a bit weird because nobody knew which wings to register. I feel I had a disadvantage for the strong winds, while in the lighter winds I had an advantage, wing size wise. Foil racing is the future, so hopefully next year we will be allowed to register three wings. When we were racing solely on fins, we had a ton of fins. Same with the boards – we need a small board for when it is windy, but we also need a bigger board for lighter winds.

I have had quite a few big crashes last year just because I have constantly been on the edge. We were just not prepared for wind that strong yet. So, we are pushing the limits of that gear, which is actually not working in those conditions, but you had to try anyway. Next year things should be more stable and we will be faster.

The intensity of the racing is so much more than with fin racing. There are so many different lines and tactics we can take. It is much faster. During the gybes there is so much more opportunity to overtake. If you crash on one leg, you can still come back on the foil, whereas with the fin it was already game over.

DANGER

Back in the day with the fin, racing was also dangerous. There were some big crashes and if it goes wrong, it goes badly wrong. With the foil, it is the same. If somebody crashes in front of you at the wrong moment, it is over! I had a very close incident when racing in the waves in Sylt with a sailor on a fin right behind me… if he had been on a foil, it would have been extremely bad! Luckily, he went about 20cm upwind, otherwise I would have been in hospital, no doubt about it. That is just part of the sport. Every extreme sport can be like this. I like the extreme side, of course! The more adrenaline, the more danger, the better. Why should it be easy? The danger side is all part of the game.

TRAINING

Myself and Taty train with an ex-world champion body builder in Bonaire. He is my fitness trainer and keeps me up to date with diets, training routines and the different approaches I should take before freestyle or race events. If it is pure slalom, then I will try and add some extra weight and if it’s freestyle, I will work on mobility. It depends on where I am and what I am doing. I am kind of addicted to the gym in some ways. I really enjoy it, but it is tough to keep it up when I am travelling. Home is the only place that I can truly focus. I have a routine, the right food and practise the correct training. When you are on the road, it is nearly impossible to keep this up. I can go once to the gym at an event, but that is not the right way to go. To do it properly, it has to be a routine, every day the same.

DIET

The food is actually the most important thing… you can go the gym eight times a week if you want, but if you don’t eat the right way then there is virtually no point going. You need to eat at the same time every day and eat the right food. At events you simply don’t have the time to go to the supermarket and cook six or seven meals a day. We have lots of different diets depending on where we are with our training and it depends if we are maintaining or heading for a peak for example. Our trainer is very strict. If you are a minute late for training, then he is going to send you out running before the training even begins. You can be dead before you even get going. You might have to run 10km before starting a heavy leg day! Taty knows all about that as he is always late! I am always on time. It is addictive because when you see that the process is working and you feel the benefits, you want more and more, so you get deeper into it.

HEIGHT AND WEIGHT

I think there is a balance for the perfect build for a racer these days. I think I am an okay weight right now, but the taller you are the more power you can generate, so for me, it is a bit of a disadvantage that I am not as tall as some other racers in the light winds. However, when it is strong then maybe I have a bit more control than the taller guys – because of my weight I can just hold it down. When I was freestyle world champion, I was around 86 kilos. Now I am 102 kilos! It is not all muscle at the moment because I don’t have the time while at events to stay in peak condition. It is hard to stay strict on diet at events, so you end up bulking up a bit. I am not fully fat or anything, but I increased by 16 kilos, which is a pretty big difference. Right now, I am staying around 102kg, which seems my new walk around weight. When I was 86kg, I had to do a lot of training to stay that light. My advantage now is to stay heavy for the slalom. If I want to be freestyle world champ again, I would have to lose at least 15 kilos. I will lean out like crazy one day, maybe.

ASPIRATIONS

For now, I want to focus on the slalom and I really want to win a world title. That is my mission.  Last year was a bit on and off, but it felt good winning in both Sylt and Japan. I think my speed, skill and equipment are all there, so I just need to connect everything. I think I can be a contender next season for sure.

ADDICTED TO SPEED

I love any type of racing. I am very deeply into Formula 1, I follow it everywhere I go and have been to quite a few tracks. Racing runs is my blood as my grandfather was a world champion racer. Back then it was called Formula V, which was in the 1960’s. That was a different generation, but my grandmother was going to all the tracks and my mum grew up at the racetrack. She was going to different racetracks every week. We just love cars. I love engines, I love speed and all the adrenaline that goes alongside it.

SIM RACING

I am fully into the Sim racing and it is so crazy nowadays. You are sitting in a chair with a wheel in front of you, which has all the feedback that a normal car has. I race mostly with Formula 1 cars. You receive almost all the feedback that you would in a real car, you just don’t feel the G-Force, so when you break, you don’t get pulled forward or to the left or right etc. Aside from that it is pretty realistic racing. You feel it in your shoulders after a few laps. You feel the bumps and the forces through the wheel, so it is quite intense. I have gotten pretty good at it and when I am home for a few weeks, I will be in that chair for a few hours a day. I am not too bad competitively at it and there is a fully professional circuit nowadays with a world championship. Everything around a normal Formula 1 car is pretty much there, it’s just instead of jumping in the car you jump into your chair instead. They have engineers and they have a big facility at the headquarters of the brands for these proper races – including Mercedes and Red Bull. I race from home and I have competed in some league races, but it is a big commitment. You have to be there every weekend and I don’t have time for that right now. I think I could do it professionally if I had the time to do it 100%, but I don’t see myself sitting in a chair for eight hours a day in front of a screen. I need to move. I cannot sit still. I could do it for a week to ten days, but then that would be enough.

HOME

For me home is still Bonaire, but I am so busy at the moment that I spend a lot of time in Holland as my base in Europe. After an event, I am normally back in Holland until the next commitment. If I have two or three weeks without events I will go home to Bonaire. Otherwise, it is too much money to keep flying there and back too often. Times have changed a lot since I first became a pro.

COACHING & TESTING

Now I am a getting into coaching and testing, so my schedule changed a lot. The freestyle days were just pure training, whereas now with the testing I need to move around a lot more. It is a new phase, so I am enjoying the travel and visiting the different places and events that I am going to. I have been coaching Gollito Estredo, which has been fun and he will be back next year on the Freestyle World Tour. He is loving the IQ and he is the same kind of freak as me. He wants to know absolutely everything – including the intricate little details – and he wants to be as good as he can possibly be.