SHQ

25 year old UK rider Robby Swift sucker-punched the PWA wave fleet in 2009, taking home a 3rd place podium finish at the end of the PWA wave series. We thought we’d do a little interrogation to see how he feels about this success, life on the JP / Pryde team and his plans for 2010.

Robby, welcome to the Boardseeker Interview, cheers for getting involved.
No problem

So, where are you now? Back home?
Yeah, just in Maui, relaxing, waiting for some swell.

Sounds nice. So, it’s been a great year for you, 3rd in Waves and a solid slalom result. After breaking your foot in 2005, you must be stoked to be back on form?
Yeah for definite, it’s great to be back.

You competed in Waves and Slalom this year, that must be pretty exhausting?
Yeah, it’s a lot to do, and a lot of kit to lug around, that is for sure. It gets very expensive and quite demoralizing having to check in at the airport with 13 bags of windsurfing equipment each time you go somewhere, but it’s worth it, I enjoy all the disciplines. I feel like I am getting better at slalom and it does seem to help me with my wave sailing too, learning how to tune my gear better and allowing me to feel confident taking bigger sails for my wave heats.

So, tell us about your 2009 wave tour.
It was a solid year for me, we had wind at all the tour stops which was obviously great. Events wise, first up was Cabo Verde. A fantastic location and here we scored classic down the line starboard tack wave riding. We had three swells in 10 days and pretty much used up every bit of daylight every day what with surfing in the morning and then competing in the afternoon. It’s a great place and I came away with 9th. Not great, but a solid start. It’s a world class wave there, wave riding at it’s best. But it’s here that Josh rules, so he is a tough one to take down.

And from there on to Gran Canaria?
Yeah, that was an all time classic. We were so lucky with the conditions it was unbelievable. I had been there to train for a month before the event and barely had two days of good wave sailing. Then the contest came, the conditions turned on and we had up to logo high waves rolling in and good wind for my 3.5 Combat. You can’t buy that kind of luck. I had a decent run through the double here, meaning I left with joint 9th again. I was happy with that, especially considering I had some extremely tough heats. Consistency is the key, so I knew I’d be going in to Sylt with a chance of a good overall result.

So yeah, how was that?
Well, I went into Sylt knowing that I had a good chance of getting to at least 3rd place. It was close at the top, I was in 5th, but was only about a point behind Ricardo and maybe two points behind Thomas Traversa. The conditions were about as good as Sylt gets; five metre weather and starboard tack. I advanced reasonably far through the single, only coming unstuck against an on fire Alex Mussolini in the quarters. I had a solid heat here but snapped my board at the beginning, so wasn’t surprised to go down in the end and losing to the guy who won took some of the sting away.

I fought back in the double and came up against Thomas Traversa. He had just beaten Ricardo which meant that only he and Victor Fernandez still had a chance of finishing ahead of me in the overall. I sailed a great heat to beat Thomas, landing a pushloop table top, a big backloop, a double and two solid wave rides. He’s a great sailor, but I had a feeling he’d struggle with the strong wind and I was right. On the other side of the same heat Danny Bruch did me a favour, he had been up against Victor and if he beat him, this would make 3rd overall mine. He did, and that was me, safe in 3rd overall.

A great result for me, but tinged with a bit of bad luck. If I had got through a couple more heats I could have maybe sealed 2nd, but the way things fell, this wasn’t going to be the case. I was up against Danny Bruch next and with all my jumps in the bag and needing just a wave ride, I was tempted in to a double. The ramp was good, but sadly Klaas, (up against Pete Volwater) was below me, so I sheeted out half way to avoid landing on him and in the process ended up breaking my mast. Ricardo was on the beach with my spare kit, but with a monster shorebreak to get past and just under two minutes left in the heat, there was no time. It was more than a little annoying when I eventually looked at the score sheets, as I needed to only score a 2 on a wave to get the win and really shouldn’t have gone for that double. On reflection, I wish we had tried to get the gear out, but hey, some you win, some you lose.
At the end of the day though, I was extremely glad to have finished in 3rd place, my first podium finish since I broke my foot right after I last came 3rd in the waves in 2005. Now I just have to take that result into 2010 and try to jump another couple of places higher!

So you’re feeling pretty positive about the wave tour right now?
Yeah, the tour was a little short for my liking, I mean we only had three events, but at least we did get really good conditions for all of them. But yeah, all in all, good. Just more events, that’d be great.

And what about slalom? You’ve got solid wave results, but how are you going to get the slalom results up? (Robby came 15th in Slalom in 2009)
I tried so hard this year in Slalom. I put on nearly 10kg of weight and trained day in, day out in Maui, probably more than I did for waves. At the start of the year, I was completely broken as my results were even worse than last year, but then gradually throughout the year, I improved more and more and finished up in Sylt with a 7th which was my best result ever.

Why do you think you find Slalom more of a struggle then Waves?
I think that slalom is the discipline where the oldest people do best. Look at the top 3 this year, all over 35 years old with 15+ years of racing experience. I am making my way up the fleet, but it seems to happen ever so slowly as the differences in speed are so minute between lots of the sailors and it all ends up coming down to your starting, your gybing and your presence of mind on the race course. This is not something you can train for, rather something that is learned over time and becomes intrinsic to your sailing as you gain experience. I hope that next year I will be able to put more and more solid races one after the other and stop being so erratic on the race course. I see it coming in my own sailing but I think that it takes time for the consistency to start turning into good results.

Is it a bit demoralizing, having someone like Antoine dominating so fiercely? Or does this just make you raise your game?
I actually like it that someone can be so consistently at the top. He is the most dedicated, hard working guy on the slalom tour right now. He never seems to stop sailing and it pays off. He also told me that when he was 25 he was struggling to get into the top 10 so his story actually gives me hope that with time and dedication, it could be possible to get to the top of the slalom fleet and stay there.

How do you feel about the lack of an overall title this year? Surely that must grate a bit? If that existed, you’d be right up there?
Well, yeah. I wish there was an overall title, without a doubt. I think I would be pretty well in the running for it most years. The main argument against it is that the sponsors simply don't pay riders enough to allow them to go to all the events in two different disciplines. It is a very good argument, not many people are able to do all the events and I think it is a real shame. There are plenty of good slalom racers among the wave sailors and plenty of good wave sailors who only do slalom and it would be fantastic for us all to be able to do both disciplines and see who is the best overall windsurfer in the world. Just like in the old days. That was the competition that we all used to follow. Would anyone ever beat Bjorn? Then Kevin did and it was amazing, and then slalom kind of died out and the overall died with it. I think it is a real shame.

Agreed, fingers crossed one day it comes back. Hey, how has your equipment held up in 09? After a year of solid results, you must be pretty in tune with it?
I did lots of work on the development of the Combats and I really love the sails but when it comes down to it, both of the events since we got the new sails were in onshore conditions so I decided to use the Alphas for competition this year and it really paid off. I love the sails, they are extremely light and nice and powerful, but still super soft and easy to use. I don’t think I could have asked for a better all round sail this year and the little bit of extra grunt really got me going quickly on the inside in Sylt. I actually used a production JP Wave 93 single fin for almost all my heats in Sylt. I had been practicing on it in Maui, knowing that the conditions would be tricky in Sylt. I had found the best fin for the board, the Maui Ultra Fins X-Wave 22. Antoine and I both tested about 10 different fins at Camp One before going to Sylt and we both fell in love with that one. It was nice to go to the event with all the gear tuned up this year and I think it showed in my better results.

So JP / Pryde give you the chance to get involved in R+D?
Yeah definitely. I speak to Martin Brandner most weeks about some issue or other. He asks all the team for their input about the graphics, videos, etc. We all work on the development of the new boards and help out by giving our opinions on the current equipment. And then with Neil Pryde I help out with the development of the wave sails in the winter, and have some input in the slalom sails swell. Obviously though, there is quite a line of people in front of me when it comes to slalom development so my involvement in that is not so great. I seem to be fairly adept at the destruction of equipment though, so both Neil Pryde and JP use me for durability testing, a job which I seem to take very seriously! I put in hundreds of hours on the water and really put the gear through the works in some of the heaviest conditions you can get so that hopefully by the time the gear makes it into production, it has had just about everything thrown at it!

I imagine this involvement really helps when it comes to competition?
Of course. We try so many things that it becomes really interesting knowing just how far you can push trends and the equipment. And this obviously translates to the race course / a wave heat. The better the gear gets, the more familiar you are with it, then the more comfortable you feel when it comes to a heat. You know that your board is going to go exactly where you want it to on the water and that in turn helps you to push your own skill level.

So with good kit, the chance to do R+D and world champions for team mates, you must be stoked to be on the Neil Pryde / JP team?
Well, I love it. For me the equipment is the best, the marketing is the best and the way they handle the logistics of supplying you with the gear you need to compete all over the world is amazing. I think we get the best support from our sponsors of any of the team riders on tour and it is really nice that even though you are working with such a big company, they take the time to make sure that you are happy and have everything you need. They also help with other opportunities, such as the filming and the podcasts and helping develop the equipment.

Yeah, how are they going?
The video work has been a great opportunity. Together with my girlfriend Heidy we make the event podcasts and we produce various travel stories. It’s fantastic to be able to let people watch our adventures online as soon as they happen. I know that people love watching videos online and it’s really satisfying when people come up to me and say how much they enjoyed watching ours.

And you’ve also been doing some clinics, right?
Yeah, this was the first year that I have been sponsored by Harry Nass and he gave me the opportunity to come out to Egypt to help Micah Buzianis with the slalom clinic there. I have never been involved with teaching a big group of people before, it has always been more one on one stuff, but the group was great, and it turned out to be really easy. We were blessed with fantastic conditions, good wind 4.7 - 5.4 every day. I am sure that this will be something that I will get more and more involved with in the future as I really enjoyed seeing how much everyone improved and how happy they were that someone was taking the time to go through everything in detail and help them understand.

So, back to the sailing. In all honesty where does your heart lie? Slalom, Waves, or true Big Wave Riding?
I’d have to say that Big Wave Riding is still probably my favourite part of windsurfing and surfing. I love logo to mast high days when you can just go for broke without worrying about things, but there is nothing quite the same as dropping down the face of a 20 foot wave and trying to make a cool looking turn with such a huge amount of water moving around you. The speed with which the water sucks clean on a huge wave is amazing, it really feels like your board is being sucked down onto the wave and even though you are going as fast as you can, you can't quite seem to get away from the water roaring behind you.

You have to be sure of what the wave is going to do way before you get in position to bottom turn because at that point, you are already committed and if you are too deep, there is no going back. It is a rush like no other I have ever felt and it is so rare that you get to experience a really massive swell that you savour for years. I think there have only been about 5 enormous swells since I have been living on Maui and I remember each one of them as if it were yesterday. Hopefully we will get at least one or two this winter as it is an El Niño year, and they say that that should call for some massive swells!

I guess that’s a perk of living in Maui huh? Hey, what’s life like out there? Go on, make us jealous.
Ha, well, life on Maui is pretty much all you would imagine it to be. I made the sensible investment of buying a jet ski out here in 2003. Before that, there were a lot of days when the waves were simply too big to do anything with and you would end up stuck on the beach watching massive surf but not able to get out there. Since then, I have been really on it, first with Ross Williams but since he moved to Argentina I tend to team up with Jason Polakow. We sail and surf on the medium sized days, all the way up to about 10 feet Hawaiian (20 foot faces) and then once the swell goes over that limit, the jet ski comes out to take us out to the outer reefs to sail or surf depending on the wind.

And what if there’s no wind?
When there is no wind, (which is not very often) I like to play golf and tennis and ride my road bike. I also go to the gym with Team MPG 3 times a week to keep in shape. It is really a sportsman's playground out here and everyone's lifestyle matches that. We almost all go to bed at around 9pm and are awake before 7 to make the most of the daylight. I would say that I get in the water at least 5 times a week and do some kind of sport every single day without fail. You simply can't stay inside for more than a few hours at a time as the weather is so great and there is always something fun to do!

Nice, I’m officially jealous. So, what’s next? What do you have planned for the winter?
I’m going to Chile in 2 weeks to start getting set up for some long trips down there. I went there last year with Klaas Voget, Victor Fernandez and my brother and we had such an amazing time that David (my brother) and I bought a plot of land overlooking the water. It was so cheap that it seemed stupid not to and now we hope to spend much more time down there, enjoying the extremely long, world class and very uncrowded waves. The wind also comes predominantly from the left in Chile which will be great training for the PWA as we will probably only have port tack events next year. With Klaas and Victor down there, Ross Williams promising to visit whenever I am there and people like Brawzinho, Ricardo and Arnon saying that they want to come down, I think it will be a pretty awesome playground!

Going anywhere else, as if that’s not enough?
Other than Chile, I’ll obviously be in Maui, but I’ll also be going to Argentina for Christmas, flying to Australia in January and possibly South Africa in February. By the time you have flown somewhere that far away and got settled in, it seems like the time there goes by very fast, especially when you spend most of the time watching the forecast and getting really excited about the next big swell! We had a lot of that in Maui already this month. There were two horrible weeks without waves, just waiting, and now the waves have really come with a vengeance!

Sounds great
It’s good for sure, but it’s not all great. Unfortunately I tweaked my ankle a bit last week and missed 3 of the best days of the year so far! I am already getting nervous that the winter is going to pass me by without me taking full advantage of it. And it is only November! I am back on the water now but true to form, the waves have backed off again and the forecast isn’t looking that great for the next week or so. It is funny how much we treasure those good days and how addicted we all are to windsurfing even though it’s what we do all day every day! I’m off to Chile on Sunday and it has been pretty flat down there recently, so I can only hope that that means that when I get there, the waves will start rolling on in.

Chile, Australia, Argentina, Maui, South Africa, that’s a lot of travel…
Yeah, it ends up being a pretty hectic lifestyle for someone who ostensibly has 6 months off each year. I put thousands of pounds and hundreds of hours in to traveling and chasing waves because it is what I love doing and it is what I would be working all my life trying to do anyway. I guess when you look at my travel schedule, a lot of it self-imposed, you would think that I am crazy, but you only live once and it is a fantastic time in your life to be lucky enough to see all these places so I am just going to keep on living full throttle and praying that it will be a long time till it all has to come to an end!

So, finally, looking forward to next year, you came third this year in waves, who stands in your way in 2010?
Kauli is obviously rival number one. Then there’s Victor Fernandez. He didn't have such a good year this year but he is an amazing sailor and will certainly be back. Brawzinho is incredibly talented and equally motivated. Ricardo probably has the most talent out of anyone but just slightly less motivation than the other three I have already mentioned. I also think Ross Williams is amazing, he hardly sails waves at all throughout the year as he lives down in Buenos Aires and yet he still managed to come 5th in Cabo Verde this year. Alex Mussolini just won Sylt so he’s one to watch out for. Then there’s Klaas Voget, Thomas Traversa and let's not forget the Canarian sailors, Jonas, Dario and most recently and also most impressively the 15 year old Philip Koster.

And in Slalom?
Well, with slalom it’s more a battle with myself. I just have to up my consistency and hopefully that’ll lead to better results. I just need to practice, more and more.

Well, have fun with that, enjoy Chile and good luck in 2010

Thanks
Robby Swift is sponsored by JP Australia, Neil Pryde and Harry Nass Windsurfing Centres.