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| Aaron Hadlow is kitesurfing’s most successful competitor ever |
| Sunday, 12 April 2009 00:28 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
He's blond. He's British. He's a 20-year-old five-time world champ. Aaron was just fifteen when he won his first world championship. Fifteen. Four years on from dipping a toe in the Atlantic waters off Cornwall, where he grew up, hand-held by a kiteboard-crazy dad, he had taken on all-comers in this fast-growing, fast-flowing arena, and won. Photo thanks to Craig Kolesky Almost without noticing what he had achieved, Hadlow had become the first superstar and poster-boy for of kiteboarding, a sport that was scooting from the extreme sports heartland into the recreational mainstream. Exactly the right person in exactly the right place at exactly the right time, he’d caught a break he had no intention of letting slip. Over the next four seasons, he became champ again. And again. And again. And again. ‘Dominance’ barely does justice to the Rottweiler-grip Hadlow – a friendly, tousle-haired 20-year-old – has exerted on his chosen sport, and he continues to reframe the parameters by which it is judged. Over the past five years, as ‘new’ became ‘norm’, Hadlow hit the reset button, forcing kiteboarding’s governing body, the PKRA (Professional Kiteboard Riders Association), to recalibrate its judging criteria, as the levels of skill, finesse and technique he displayed in his routines went beyond their marking scale. In 2008, for example, he battled as much against the PKRA judges’ verdict of what constitutes the most difficult and demanding moves, as he did against his rivals. Remarkably, then, for one of such tender years, he’s already a victim of his own success – forced to dumb down his tricks to ensure they’re understood and correctly marked, while knowing he can ride faster, higher, better.  Photo thanks to Craig Kolesky Frustrating? He’s phlegmatic. “There’s a weird mentality towards winners,” he notes, casually, at ease with his success. “When you start winning, people feel the need to knock you; not all people, but sometimes it feels like that. We’ve got top judges and it’s a really difficult job, but obviously they’re not riding at the same level as us competitors because then they’d be competing as well!” he explains. “About halfway through last season I was trying to push my riding in a different style. Just making it a bit smoother. But it wasn’t scoring as much as the really technical tricks, so I just changed my tack and did what they wanted for the competition.” That change of approach, a decision he now makes sound like a mild shift in routine, actually won him his fifth consecutive world title. But Hadlow is mature enough to know when and where to spend his creative energy. He even toyed with the idea of not competing in 2009, in order to pursue his love of innovation more freely. “This year I thought I would wait for the dates to come out and check how it goes. I wanted to go and do some video projects instead (Hadlow’s movie Calibrate was released in March). But I’ve seen the calendar and it doesn’t take up so much time, so this year I’m just gonna follow the criteria and push my technical riding that way. Then with the time I have off, maybe I’ll do some other projects which can show off my freeriding.” If he sounds like an image-savvy veteran of the sports-leisure battlefield, that’s because he is – however strongly his boy-band blond looks tempt you to think otherwise. Like others who excel young, travelling far and fast, he’s a curious mix of the world-weary and the wide-eyed. “I think I’ve changed as a person,” he says, “but not from when I wasn’t winning. I look at some people and I just think, ‘What an idiot, why would you be doing that?’ I’ve had it before, though, where you can feel yourself starting to get a bit cocky and I’m like, ‘What am I doing?’ I just focus on my friends around me when that happens and think about how I was brought up.” Mention of home takes Hadlow straight to his father Ian and his life- determining guidance at an early age: the initial introduction to the sport in 2000 and the decision to move the family to South Africa two years later to give Aaron the best possible environment in which to learn, then hone his skills. “My dad has guided me through everything,” he confesses. “He started kiteboarding before me and got me into the whole thing. I used to come back from school on the bus and I’d see him out, and I’d watch. Then we went on holiday to the Dominican Republic for two weeks and I was up and going because of the great conditions. He’s still there for me now. If I’m ever in trouble, I just call him and more than likely he’s been in a similar situation in one way or another. Eventually he turns from a dad into a friend, I think as you get older that just happens for most people.” Ian has sent his protégé out solo for the past three seasons, with Hadlow junior mature enough to handle the pressures of international competition alone. Those fixed, familial points of reference ground Hadlow as he dances across a global stage. Check out that 2009 schedule: from April to November the freestylers jet from France to Mexico, through the Dominican Republic, Spain, Germany, Brazil, before the finale in New Caledonia, in the south Pacific. Heady stuff for a gifted young man with a surf- buff athlete’s physique, global corporations as backers, and occasional wind-slack days when there’s time to burn… How easy would it be to sway, go giddy in the sun, and be suckered in by the easy charms of simpering bikini-clad beauties? Very… but there’s steel in the Hadlow genes, a wary (though not hostile) suspicion of newcomers, a sense that he understands his gift is a rare one to be nurtured. Hadlow senior was cute enough to recognise within weeks of Aaron being kitted up that he had an explosive talent on his hands, one whose native ability had the potential to upset the established order and routines of an older generation of professional riders. And he was wise enough to instil in Aaron a precious confidence, allowing a young boy the freedom to express himself through athletic endeavour and bust convention without fear of failure or ridicule. From the beginning, Hadlow innovated rather than aped. To those who understood, the signals were clear, very early, that freestyle kiteboarding was about to become the domain of a certain, powerful young man from the south coast of England. Aaron Hadlow, prodigy and pioneer, has crested the wave of dynamic change in kiteboarding, since it erupted in the late ’90s as ‘the fastest growing water sport in the world’. The once winning moves from those early days a decade or so ago, when riders carved huge, dangling, spinning, paragliding-like airs, have been replaced with powered choreography. The height and speed are developed from the kite being always in the critical position in the centre of the ‘window’ (continually developing forward power like wakeboarding rather than upwards lift) and using board speed for ‘pop’ (good air). The competing riders’ ages, meantime, have dropped to a late teen average in the PKRA world tour, ludicrously making Hadlow, 20, something of a grand old man. But the thrill hasn’t gone. No way. Ten years on, he still gets the buzz that sucked him in first time around: “It’s still a sport of pure adrenaline,” he grins, “and just having the ability to be able to, like, travel and get paid to do what you love and meet people, to see the world… it’s just the feeling you get… and for me, to be able to innovate in the sport and bring new stuff and create new tricks and stuff like that is really appealing.” Spend any time with Hadlow, and it’s quickly apparent that his globetrotting, self-reliant years on the circuit have instilled an uncommon maturity. Today, for example, we’re chatting in the dim, surroundings of a back-street south London photo studio – almost as far removed from the blissful beaches of the PKRA world tour as it’s possible to be. He’s relaxed in spite of the time demands being made, amenable despite being hung from guy ropes and doused in cold water for the sake of The Shot. These are, he understands, the demands made of a professional sportsman; the price of a gilded life: “I don’t really enjoy having to answer loads of questions and check my emails all the time, but it’s work and I’ve just learned how to cope with it. Whatever comes along I’ll do it and it’s all good, but the fun bit is still being with your friends and going kiting. I started off in England doing the tour because I just wanted to compete and, you know, loads of us all got on really well and just met up with each other. Now I meet everyone at each event and loads of my friends are from abroad. Just being social is one of the good things about it.”  Photo thanks to Christian Black Those close to Hadlow reckon his essential ‘sameness’, his sanity, is rooted in self-belief and professionalism: self- belief to experiment; professionalism that keeps him ahead of the chasing pack. And he’s smart. Despite kiteboarding’s burgeoning popularity, there’s less money in the professional pot than in 2002, when American Mark Shinn was main man. Still, the cream rises and Hadlow employs an agent to handle business affairs and maximise exposure, while still keeping schedule space for training and travel. “Yeah, I don’t have a training regime as such,” he laughs. “I just kite as much as possible because it’s the best practice. But you always have to stay on top of things, stay fit and just be ready for each competition. On the circuit there’s quite a few guys who are pretty good, always pushing, so you’ve always got to stay on top of the game. If I’m stuck in the UK for a week and I see there’s going to be no wind before the event I’ll go somewhere else to practise. I’m very competitive.” With practice and competition, come injuries – “I was out a few years back for a couple of months with an ankle injury. Last year I was having to wear a knee-brace. There’s lots of repetitive impact coming down on your knees and ankles, it’s quite strenuous” – and danger, such as the very real threat of being garrotted by a cable: “Oh yeah, for sure, that’s a risk.” Hadlow’s grimacing, dead serious now. “These lines are really taut when you’re up with the kite, but luckily nothing serious has happened. It’s just the person flying it needs to be totally in control. It’s all about kite control.” Bit by bit, the profile grows: Hadlow is recognised everywhere he goes on the PKRA tour. Just over a year ago, during a week spent in Tenerife, Hadlow and travel partner Ruben Lenten would draw crowds to watch their impromptu displays, and before they could pack up their kites, the duo would have to negotiate a trail of autograph-hunters. With a simple, shy reluctance, he admits: “There was a real big change in the sport where a younger generation came into it. I started off thinking, yeah, I could probably do pretty well at this and for it to happen so soon is really, really amazing. And the sport’s starting to get way bigger. The media’s getting behind it now and I’m doing more photo shoots and studio shoots and things like that. It’s definitely growing. We can feel it happening around us.” Think of Hadlow’s as a cult rock-star’s lifestyle: within touching distance of kitchen-sink familiarity, yet still far from being a household name. It’s coming, though. In 2007 he was nominated for the prestigious Laureus World Sports Awards, a nod that included a trip to Barcelona for the glitzy black-tie ceremony. It felt big, particularly so for a sportsman more used to eyeing his fans from a comfortable distance – on the beach while he’s on water: “There were so many people there,” he recalls. “I remember stepping onto the red carpet with all these photographers everywhere. Imagine a grandstand of photographers, it was mad. I just stood there with all these flashes going crazy and all these people shouting my name to look here or there. I was just freaking out, laughing at what I was doing. I had to do these interviews and I’d look a little further down the carpet and there were famous footballers doing the same thing.” He gushes now and in that there’s still a hint of youth, a reminder that he is just 20 years old. But it’s deceptive: there’s no doubt his eye remains firmly on the prize. Push him, and he’ll admit – quietly, no pomp – that he’s a pioneer; that for those who care, he’s taking a young sport into realms where the possibilities remain unknown. “I really want to help steer the sport in the right direction,” he reflects, calmly. “I know I’ve made up quite a few tricks in the past, but those were more for competitions. Now I’m trying to bring a style that’s nicer to watch. I look to sports like snowboarding and motocross and the styles are really defined. I’m trying to bring that to our sport now, so people look at that and are really amazed by it. I want to be part of the upbringing of kitesurfing. That’s what I’m trying to bring to the sport now, just to make it bigger and mainstream.” He is. He will. www.redbulletin.com
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