GPS Team Challenge 2019

In my recent review of 2019, I did not mention the GPS Team Challenge results for the year - but they deserve mentioning. In the international ranking, our "United Speedsailors of America" team came in 20th among 57 competing teams.

That's our best rank since the team was formed by combining a few smaller teams from all over the USA. One thing that helped the team improve over previous years was that more windsurfers contributed to the monthly scores (where the best results from 2 windsurfers on the same day are ranked against all other teams in 6 categories). We had 10 team members collection the coveted "jelly beans" - definitely a team effort!

There's also a bit of friendly competition within the team, and the GPSTC web site shows individual rankings for the year. Thanks to our fantastic trip to Australia and a nice long distance session in Hatteras, I was able to improve my personal bests (PBs) in all 6 categories in 2019. But that still was not enough to beat Boro in the US rankings for the year:

But I got a couple of first places, and second places in the four other categories, so I'm quite happy with that - especially considering that quite a few of the windsurfers further down in the rankings are much better speedsurfers than I am!

The lovely Nina also improved all her PBs in 2019, which included reclaiming the (unofficial) women's world record for distance. She also got the #2 spot for the most technical speed category, alpha 500 (speed over 500 meters with a jibe in the middle), and #3 and 4 spots in all other categories, with 29 women from all over the world competing in 2019:

That gave her the #1 spot in the yearly overall rankings! While the competition for second to sixth place was close (29 to 33 points), her 16-points total separated her nicely from the other women. Congratulations!