Mads Wollesen and Finn Behrens finally get to ride the kicker they built a while back, but they had to hijack it to make it happen!

What happens when a bunch of kiters get together and secure some funds to build a kicker? Good things surely, although sometimes, group politics can get in the way. 

MadsWollesen and Finn Behrens are two talented riders from Flensburg in the North East of Germany. It’s a small town surrounded by water that shares the border with Denmark. Most of the time when these two riders go kiting it is cold, but they love it so much they don’t care. Just like a lot of riders from that part of the world!

They both love to kitesurf and are totally dedicated when it comes to getting sessions on the water. The two of them won’t think twice about jumping in the car and driving for hours on end to get a good session in, or road tripping for a couple of weeks and living out of the boot of a car if the conditions are on.

Wakestyle riding is their poison, and they also love to take photos and make films too. As ever if you are a wakestyle rider it is often hard to get some time on features like kickers. While cable parks are cropping up more and more in Europe unless you have a permanent kite park like the Slider Project in Hood River or Real Watersports in Cape Hatteras it can be tricky to get your fix.

Mads, Finn and a group of their kite buddies decided to take matters into their own hands and build their own kicker, a familiar tale to a few of you no doubt. Two years ago this group of kiters managed to secure some funds from a local youth project, with cash in the bank surely a summer of epic riding was on the cards…

Sadly, once the group had built the kicker, internal politics started to kick in. Mads and Finn wanted to ride it all the time, take it on road trips and leave it in locations for short periods of time so they could maximise their time on it. The rest of the group weren’t so keen, and in the end, the kicker got ridden once and then left on dry land as it became too much of a hassle to try and organise the entire group to put it somewhere where they could all agree to ride.

Fast forward a couple of years and Mads got an internship at a German TV show in Bavaria. The catch was his new office was as far from the ocean as you could possibly get. Suddenly his water time was going to be significantly reduced, and he and his buddy Finn figured as it was late November they needed one last mega session as a send off before the real world took over Mads’ life for a bit.

Hatching a plan they decided they would rent a trailer, steal the kicker and take it to a spot in Denmark for a shred session they wouldn’t forget. It seemed like a simple plan until the trailer rental company pointed out they didn’t have the correct driving license to rent the trailer. Explaining their plight, and their plan the guy behind the desk took pity on them, rented them the trailer and sent them on their way.

Next up they had to “borrow” the kicker, manhandle it onto the trailer and get it into the water at their chosen spot, a place called Kegnaes in Denmark. Fortunately, with a cover of darkness and a bit of brute force that part of the plan went swimmingly!

They arrived to find it was freezing cold, starting to rain and the wind was gusty. It wasn’t enough to put the two of them off, though (not much is with these guys) and they launched the kicker, set the angle and proceeded to hit it over and over, having the session of the summer at a remote spot they had all to themselves.

Butter flat water, a kicker they had wanted to ride for years and two great friends having the time of their lives. I think this sums up the very essence of kitesurfing perfectly! As the sun went down the boys had a decision to make, leave the kicker in the water for the week and carry on shredding. Or respond the calls from the rest of the crew who were worrying about their kicker that had mysteriously vanished.

Being the good blokes they are, Mads and Finn decided they had had their fun and drove the kicker back to where they had “borrowed” it from earlier. That was the end of their summer of riding for the year and what a way to send the season off. There was no malice in this between Mads, Finn and the crew; it’s just a case of, as Mads succinctly puts it, “too many cooks spoiling the broth”.

This coming summer the dynamic duo plan to build a new kicker, just the two of them, so they can take it wherever they want, whenever they want. As for the kicker in the photos, Mads doesn’t know if it will ever get used again, which is a shame because it looks like an awesome feature to ride!

Meanwhile, somewhere in Germany there is a kicker out there just waiting to be ridden again…

By Rou Chater
Rou has been kiting since the sports inception and has been working as an editor and tester for magazines since 2004. He started IKSURFMAG with his brother in 2006 and has tested hundreds of different kites and travelled all over the world to kitesurf. He's a walking encyclopedia of all things kite and is just as passionate about the sport today as he was when he first started!

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