Tomorrow, Thursday, the Upper Austria KiteFoil Grand Prix Traunsee 2022 will start on the Traunsee in front of Ebensee, which will last up to and including Sunday. The sporting event marks the start of this year’s KiteFoil World Series, which will then be continued in Gizzera (Italy), Sarigerme (Turkey) and Jeddah (Saudi Arabia). The competition consists of four days of racing – the Medal Series will be held on Sunday.
In this sport, which will be Olympic for the first time in Paris in 2024, the best 40 men and women will be at the start this time on Lake Traunsee. The men’s field of participants is already fully booked with 40 athletes.
By being included in the Olympic program, KiteFoil was also taken into account in the major World Sailing regattas and is therefore becoming more and more popular with all international sailing associations, including the Austrian Sailing Association (OeSV), which is giving this trend sport full attention and attention in its 2024 Olympic campaign meticulously dedicated.
With Valentin Bontus from Lower Austria and Alina Kornelli, who comes from Bavaria and has dual Austrian and German citizenship, the OeSV has two athletes who are tackling the qualification for the 2024 Olympic Games in the current campaign. Both athletes are at the start at the Traunsee. For the first time, the two can qualify for the 2024 Olympics at the World Championships in summer 2023 in The Hague, for which they would have to be the eighth best nation.
In the previous major regattas in 2022 (Palma, Hyeres), Bontus and Kornelli each achieved the limit for Olympic participation once. The home competition at Traunsee is another career highlight for the two OeSV starters.
Source: Nachrichten
