How ****ing good is kelly margets!

Just won the down wind race in hood river ( though is sounded like a no wind flat track race).
He's not 20 years old he still has to hold down a job and raise two kids yet on any give Sunday he can dig deep and take on the worlds best and beat them time and time again..

Well done champion enjoy a beer after that performance..

Trav shows he's easily the best in the world atm 2nd yesterday by a split second and 2nd again today.. He's having a good year and if his heart is as big as Kelly's he's going to be at the top of this sport for another decade no doubt..

Beau had a top performance.
Angie had a solid weekend!!

Awesome.. .. shame about the wind..

teatrea said...
Amazing effort for a soon to be 43 year old.well done hes proving age is just a number.

I wish that was true. But it is an incredible performance from him. Really atonishing.

As far as I know it involves drinking xxxx oh and all that other stuff you said teatrea

Annabel would probably win on a surfboard.I would say very little.I think Connor is behind travis and danny and kai has not been in great racing form.makes kellys win even more impressive.Take nothing away from his win it was a show of pure grit and smarts.

I think Kai could have raced any board he wants, here a pic he posted from Hood river

Area10 said...
What role, if any, do you think that equipment played in the results at this race? Most paddlers presumably will have been expecting a downwind race (eg. Kai Lenny raced the Naish Jav Maliko, I think?) but it turned out to be a flat water slog instead. We all know that DW boards are generally pretty slow in flat water.

Which board was Connor on? He had a fairly unimpressive weekend by his standards.

Annabel was streets ahead. Of course this is probably because she is Annabel. But is her board particularly good in flat water?

Angie J's board looks a very interesting design btw.

Boards might have played a small part but this is part of racing and if you want to win you have to have the right board at the event, kelly had a good board for the day as well as out paddling anyone around him. There were still plenty of guys with flatwater boards in that race like Danny and trav and many others.

In the womens its now closer than you might think. You dont see Anabel taking off and winning by huge margins anymore and really both these races came down to the end. She is still a great paddler but the girls racing IMO will be as tight as the mens very soon with lots of strong girls now racing and getting faster.
Angies board worked unreal in this race and in the long distance she just got stuck at the front of the train for most of the race which did not help in the last km when you start to run out of gas in a race like this. Lessons learned for her and she will be alot smarter for the next I'm sure!!

SurfNiels said...
Thanks for you insights paul.j. Good to know that it is still the best man winning and not just who has the best board.
Who was after your opinion the biggest underachiever of the event ?

That's something that is impossible to say, it was a long dead flat up river slog and really everyone i seen gave it 100%. Boards will aways playa big part in a race its just not something that is going to make you win just because you have the fastest board.
With the mens racing going 14ft in the US by the looks of it then getting boards right for big races will become super important if you want to be in the front, any one who has spent time on a ocean 14 and a flatwater 14 will know how much difference there can be, this said if you can get in the right position from the start then usally a good ocean board can sit in a wash train with a lot of work!!

Did Kai *really* race the Naish Maliko DW board in preference to the Naish Javelin flat water one, in a flat water race?

Area10 said...
Did Kai *really* race the Naish Maliko DW board in preference to the Naish Javelin flat water one, in a flat water race?

Yes, pretty sure nearly all the naish riders rode the new board.

Yup, Kelly was damned impressive. And the race really sucked. Hot, smoky, and flat. In fact it was blowing in our faces for the first fifteen minutes. I was running on caffeine and stupidity--had to go grab my grandkids from the fire zone up in northeastern Washington. Fifteen hours of driving, two hours of sleep, then did the course race on a surfboard (I really hate 14s). Got a decent nights sleep then did the "nowinder" on an unlimited DW board, a 17.5' Bullet, which has to be the suckiest flatwater board on the planet. I really expected at least a little wind, maybe 10 mph, and if we got it, the Bullet would have been great in the microbumps. As it was I pushed water uphill all the way. Next day we had 25+ mph, so naturally I had to do a run.

Boards played a big part, and a lot of people had the wrong stuff. Who expects east wind in the gorge in August?? And then flat. No, really, really flat. I think a lot of the competitors expected to get some wind during the race. I know I did. If you had been on a straight flatwater board getting single glides when the wind jumped up to 15 and the DW boards were linking bumps you'd have a substantial disadvantage. Didn't happen.

Travis was more than just impressive. His finish in the course race with Danny (after Danny headed for the wrong buoy and lost most of his HUGE lead) was simply astonishing. The power these guys have in reserve and the speed they can lay down was pretty unbelievable. Most exciting SUP race I've ever seen, and I've seen every BOP and every Gorge Paddle Challenge.

I didn't get to see Kelly finish, I was in the river slowly slogging back to Hood River (they started the Open class after the men's elite) but he was the talk of the beach. I guess it was great to see. I wouldn't know, because, you now... slogging.

DavidJohn said..
Thanks Bill.. and welcome to the breeze..

I was talking to friends about the missing paddler.. Very sad.. and we were wondering.. Are there wild bears along the shore/banks?

I saw some pics the other day on Angie's FB or Instagram or somewhere else and there was a sign that said bears inhabit this area.

Yeah congrats Kelly! 43 today and still smashing it!


Shout out to all the Aussies and NZ's who did so well!


Smokin it on the new 14' x 24!