Windsurf / Press Release n.4  12 April 2005

XX Edition World Festival On The Beach
Palermo Mondello 11-22 May 2005

FROM 13 MAY THE MISTRAL CLASS WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP IN MONDELLO.
STILL UNCERTAIN THE PRESENCE OF ALESSANDRA SENSINI

From 13 to 20 May the best interpreters of worldwide windsurf are going to be the protagonists of the 2005 edition of the Mistral class world championship and of the XX edition of the world festival on the beach in Mondello. The classical show that every year opens  Palermo’s summer, with the best sailing sports, beach-volley and music has so decided to celebrate its 20th birthday in the best way, giving ospitality to worldwide exhibitions, organized by Albaria in cooperation with IMCO under the italian sailing federation and ISAF protection with several athletes representing the five continents (with the partecipation of thirty countries).
After 2003 Mistral european championship and 2004 world Raceboard, Mondello’s gulf proposes itself as an ideal location for high level windsurf as unanimously recognized at the IMCO general assembly, the internationall Mistral class organization, which, last summer in Poland, chose Albaria and Mondello for this glamorous rendezvous.
Although Mistral One Desig board lost the status of olympic board after Athens games, IMCO steadly remains the most representative all over the world and the absolute landmark due to  the lack of activity of the Neil Pryde RS:X, the new board chosen by ISAF for the Olympic games but not distributed yet in spite of the start of the new olympic quadrennium.
Among the most important athletes that are going to plough the sheet of water of Mondello’s gulf,  the best athletes of the olympic circuit, always familiar in Mondello, are not going to miss.
The italian team participates with several young talents that showed themselves in these last years most of all in the last editions of the european and world championship held in Sopot, Poland and in Nessembar, Bulgaria.
An absolute news of this world championship in Palermo, not anymore subject to the limitations of the olympic class, is the concomitant assignation of the european under 17 (youth) title.
The three times olympic Riccardo Giordano from Palermo guides a group that counts in its lines the best talents of  italian windsurf running for a place in the future edition of the olympic games: from Palermo Riccardo Belli of ISCA, junior world champion in Mexico (2003) and 4^th youth in the european category (2004), from Alto Adige Fabien Heidegger, european silver medal and junior world gold medal (2004), from Piombino Federico Esposito, italian and youth champion in charge, bronze in the bulgarian world championship and overall winner of the last edition of the world festival on the beach.
Among women big wait for the challenge that ideally offers as a prize the sporting heritage of Alessandra Sensini, winner of a gold medal and two bronzes in three editions of the olympic games, away from regattas at the moment. From Lazio Flavia Tartaglini, gold medal in the youth category of the world championship, watching herself from young Laura Linares from Marsala, junior gold medal in Mexico and in bulgaria and seriously engaged in winning titles in young categories.
Placed on archives the regattas of the world championship, from 20 to 22 may is the time of the “classics” of the world Festival on the beach to give life to the stage decdicated to windsurf:: the old glories of windsurf engaged in the second edition of the Legend Race, the “Nation Cup”, something like America’s Cup for windsurf, and the national regatta called Sicily Grand Prix.