“Let’s see how this competition goes. It’s looking a little bleak right now, but I have had a really amazing session here. I think the whole tour was pretty much competing maybe three or four days before the competition started, and I know everyone was stoked. I had four hours on the water.”
Overview
Held from September 6 to 11, 2021, on the west coast of Denmark, the 2021 GKA Kite-Surf World Cup Hvide Sande marked the GKA World Tour’s long-awaited debut in Denmark after the 2020 edition was postponed due to the pandemic. Serving as the second stop of the 2021 Kite-Surf calendar (and the third counting event toward the championship following 2020 Cabo Verde and 2021 Sylt), the event gathered 26 men and 14 women from 19 nations as part of Northern Europe’s premier WATERZ Festival. Although six consecutive days of calm weather ultimately forced the cancellation of the competition without a single heat completed, the non-result itself proved decisive in shaping the 2021 World Championship title race.
Location and the Phantom Pre-Event Session
Situated on a narrow spit of land separating Ringkøbing Fjord from the North Sea on the Jutland peninsula, the fishing town of Hvide Sande—meaning “White Sands” in Danish—is one of Northern Europe’s most versatile water sports venues. With a flat-water lagoon on the inside and a long, clean left-hand wave breaking along the south pier on the ocean side, the spot offers an ideal arena for both wave riding and strapless freestyle.
The venue comes alive when northwesterly winds hit the coast. Ironically, just three to four days before the official waiting period opened, classic northwest winds and waves delivered an epic four-hour free session where the entire tour fleet rode together at full competition intensity.
Six Days of No Wind and the Title Race Trap
Once registration concluded on September 6, however, the North Sea weather systems stalled completely, leaving only light breezes from the wrong direction. Despite daily skippers’ meetings and commentators Jo Ciastula and Gemma Hamaini performing “wind dances” on the broadcast, six days passed without contestable conditions.
The cancellation of the Denmark stop did far more than scratch an event from the calendar—it triggered a mathematical trap in the annual title race.
The 2021 championship was originally structured around four counting events: the carryover 2020 Cabo Verde opener alongside Sylt, Denmark, and Morocco in 2021. Under GKA rules, completing all four events would allow every rider to discard their single worst result (four events, one discard).
Having won the previous stop in Sylt, 15-year-old French sensation Capucine Delannoy was counting on both Denmark and Morocco to run so she could discard her early elimination from 2020 Cabo Verde and challenge rankings leader Peri Roberts for the crown.
“Yeah, well, I’m really hungry for the title too. If Denmark happens and we can run the event, and in Morocco too, then we’ll have a discard for Cape Verde, because I did a really bad result in Cape Verde, so I wish, I hope that we’ll have a discard and it will not count.”
— Capucine Delannoy
When the official call was made on September 11 to end the waiting period, the season was reduced to three counting events, wiping out the discard. Forced to carry her low Cabo Verde score into the season finale in Morocco, Capucine Delannoy’s path to the title narrowed dramatically, while Australia’s Peri Roberts—holding a 3rd in Cabo Verde and a 2nd in Sylt—gained a commanding cushion at the top of the leaderboard.
The same scenario played out in the men’s division. With James Carew sitting on a perfect 2,000 points from back-to-back victories in Cabo Verde and Sylt, challengers Pedro Matos and Airton Cozzolino lost a crucial opportunity to close the gap, allowing James Carew to head to Morocco needing only a quarterfinal finish to clinch the World Title outright.
Livestream Studio Insights and Community Initiatives
Even without competition action on the water, the GKA livestream team broadcast daily from the studio booth, bringing in riders such as Matchu Lopes, Pedro Matos,Francesco Cappuzzo, Kiko Roig,Nicola Abadjiev, Stella Groschupf, and siblings Camille and Capucine Delannoy. Head Judge Mallory de la Villemarqué and new judge Paulino Pereira broke down the scoring criteria in depth, while riders showcased their quiver setups in “Tech Talk” board-bag segments. Appearing alongside his younger sister Capucine Delannoy—who had just landed the first women’s double front roll in Sylt—Camille Delannoy joked about how their sibling rivalry pushed him to aim even higher:
“She’s doing doubles and I’m doing a single front roll, and I have to be going for triples! Okay, now I fully understand.”
— Camille Delannoy
Off the water, athletes explored the local lighthouse and visited a Hvide Sande environmental workshop that collects plastic waste from the Danish coastline and upcycles it into surfboard fins and keychains.
Closing out the event on Day 6, GKA Tour Manager Tom Hartmann confirmed that all registered competitors would receive baseline attendance points and promised a return to settle the score:
“Which means now everybody goes home with a few points, all the riders, and yeah, we’re going to go now to Dakhla in a month. I mean, we definitely, I want to already promise everybody here, we’re going to be back in Denmark in 2023… in two years we are back here to get some unfinished business done.”
— Tom Hartmann
Search Aliases: 2021 GKA Kite-Surf World Cup Hvide Sande, 2021GKAKite-SurfWorldCupHvideSande