Hi everyone,

I am out here in one of the best locations in the world for riding: Xtreme-Gene, near Cordoba in Spain. Since I got here 4 days ago it has been nothing but sun (40 degrees) and flat calm water. Yeah that’s “mucho mucho” hot for a fair skinned Irish kid!!!

When I first arrived there was a good array of riders including Dylan Mitchell from South Africa and Lucas Langlois from France, not to mention the two coaches Carro Djupso, from Sweden, and fellow Irish team rider David Coates (DC).So, as you can imagine with these riders, and the huge wake, the level of riding has been unreal and only getting better!!!

So on day one, two and three, it was amazing to watch DC killing it, sticking Whirly 5s and toe 7s first trick off the dock!!! This put me under a lot of pressure and after my few weeks off the water, I was struggling a little for the first while, but now I am stoked as I have started to get most of my tricks back and also learnt a G-Spot :). Carro has also been riding so well getting some nice stylish tricks as well as a sick tootsie yesterday!!! Next was Dylan Mitchell, the South African, to hit the water and it has been quite honestly a pleasure to watch his sick style and big tricks.

France’s Lucas Langlois’s constant complaining about not landing a new trick in 4 years was very short lived as in just a few days he has been able to add a Batwing Blind 3, DumDum, skeezer and switch toe 7 to his array of tricks!! Then last night Andres hit the water to “just do some 180’s”!! He had an unbelievable set sticking pretty much every trick he can do and even learning a nice Indy off axis 180.

So as you can see, it has been most definitely been a “progression session” here in Xtreme-Gene over the past few days! And to be honest I cannot wait to see what is going to happen over the next few days, especially considering Irish team member Lindsay Whelan is coming out, along with Dan and Rebecca Kavanagh!!

I will keep you all updated over the next week.

Thanks for reading,

David