Breakthrough

Andrea Cucchi cracks the podium after 20 years of competing

Andre Cucchi (Starboard / Point-7) has been competing on the PWA World Tour since 1996. Cucchi is the brains behind the Darkside of Windsurfing — Point-7 — and as a result had some time away from the tour to develop his sail range, which are now some of the quickest on the market. Up until now the Italian had never achieved a podium finish on the PWA World Tour, but that all changed on Sunday as he claimed victory in the second and final elimination of the week to pip Jordy Vonk (Fanatic / North) to third place. We caught up with Andrea to see how he feels after cracking the podium and also if he approached the event any differently to normal:

PWA: Andrea, congrats on your first top 3 finish, how does it feel to finally crack the podium?

AC: “Yeah I can’t quite believe it it's my first podium in 20 years. So I can still remember my first event in Fuerteventura in ’96 — of course I haven’t competed at every PWA event since then, but it still feels great to achieve that first podium finish. I started to think about it 3 nights before the final day with [Andrea] Rosati when we were out for dinner and I told him: “Do you realise we’ve been doing this 20 years and we’ve never managed a podium.” It’s a strange but nice coincidence that here it is.”

PWA: Did you have a podium finish in your expectations?

AC: “Well, when I arrived here I was sailing the day before the event and I knew I was fast because I was sailing against the other guys who were out, but the thing is I’ve always known that I was quick and the problem hasn’t been with my speed. I feel like sometimes I’ve raced really bad and if you do that it doesn’t matter how quick you are. 

The difference this week was that we had our trainer with us and he told me: “Andrea why are you stressed? You are here to have fun. Just enjoy it and try not to be stressed or overthink things.” This made me think back to a few years ago when I was doing a lot of Formula and doing quite well and I can remember back then I was having a lot of fun competing. So, this week I thought lets just go out there and have fun — don’t worry about the result — and maybe like this everything pays off… fortunately it did.”

PWA: What would you say to Pierre Mortefon (Fanatic / North), who thought you were team sailing against him in both the quarter and semifinals…

AC: “There are many things to say, in fact one thing I would love the chance to be able to do is to team play, but the reality is I think it’s hard enough to think about yourself yet alone trying to interfere with anyone else before or during the race. And if you look at the results you can see that I actually finished in front of my team. I think it’s very hard to implement team play especially when winning yourself. I can see where Pierre may be coming from and what he means because we had similar starts on a few occasions with the same positioning, but he was always starting on top of me and I was pushing him upwind — not because I wanted to put him upwind but because I was being squeezed upwind by other sailors myself. That’s just part of the business though. It’s not that I was protecting myself from him trying to overtake me and I was just trying to make sure that I don’t hit any of the guys below me. I can remember heading to the mark and trying to keep a high line because I’m heavy  and when I gybe I know I need to remain a bit higher so I can go closer to the mark and make sure no one can cover me. In other words I’m old, I’m heavy and its nice to not have too many people on top of me after the gybe in light winds.”

PWA: Thanks Andrea, congratulations on your first podium.

You can see the full Point-7 range @ www.point-7.com, while you can keep up to date with all of Andrea Cucchi’s latest news and developments via his Facebook page HERE.