#michael rossmeier

Custom video player that has repeat and slomo features!

-It was late 90's when we first met Rossi  at Paros island. We noticed a young guy doing spocks (at that time that move seemed to have extraterrestrial origin!) Years later he became widely known as one of the best European freestylers and of course as the creator of the Tricktionary products. We caught up with Rossi two days before leaving Tirol and getting to sunny Maui-

According to your experience, what are the most common mistakes that windsurfers do?

Too short harness lines and wrong position on the boom, footstraps too tight, boom too low, sail not downhauled enough.

 Entry level freestylers should opt for bigger boards (ex. choose 110lt instead of 100lt) or that might slow down their progress?

Depends, if a 75kg guy uses 5,2 sails and smaller, definitely go for a 100 liter board. You might learn a bit quicker on a bigger board, but you mostly don’t get a good style in your moves, cause you can do mistakes and still not fall. More importantly, in this example, for a 75kg guy, just sailing  is a lot more fun on a 100lt board (or even smaller) – it is less effort, less hard on the ankles, easier to pop out of the water usually...

Name 10 freestyle moves (5 normal & 5 switch stance) and in what order should an intermediate try to learn them.

You are now talking about jumping freestyle moves I suppose – was thinking a lot about moves -  I had a hard time categorizing moves when trying to create packages for our iPhone app. At the end, I did split them into Beginner, non-jumping, jumping and wave moves. So I would think the following order could be good: Non-jumping (when planing): Duck Jibe, Backwind Jibe, 360, Cowboy, Push Tack Jumping (normal stance): Depending on where you feel you can get easier, I would start with one of the following basic moves: Airjibe (+Spock after = most common), Grubby, Willy Skipper, Flaka Jumping (switch): Puneta, Eslider, Clew-first Puneta (CF Puneta could also be first, depends on how good you are Clew-first-switch-stance), Switch Chachoo.

Who is Europe’s biggest freestyle talent at the moment?

Difficult to say, but I think the one with most potential right now is Steven van Broeckhoven... of course there are many others who are VERY good!

If you could design a freestyle sail from scratch, which characteristics would like it to have? Is a good wave sail also a good freestyle sail?

It needs to be light for its weight and also in its feeling on the water. Very neutral when ducking it against the wind cause all those new moves are with a sail-duck to backwind it… Wave sails can be good, but usually they are built heavier than they’d need be for freestyling in flat water. If it goes down to sizes 4,7 and smaller, I think it doesn’t matter so much anymore…

Give us your favorite destinations for freestyle around the world.

Lake Garda / Italy, Cabo de la Vela + Puerto Velero / Colombia.

Recently you have changed boardsponsor. Taking into consideration the current situation in windsurfing industry, how easy is for a new athlete to get a  sponsorship?

It’s pretty difficult and I think without our Tricktionary I’d have been having a very hard time getting a sponsorship. I am without sail sponsor by the way – budgets were locked already in most brands when I was searching… now I am without sponsor for a bit – we’ll see what the time brings… maybe I can already see some cool stuff coming up on the horizon … ;)

Favorite freestyle move.

Shaka!

Most difficult freestyle move.

… that I can do now safe: Onehanded Burner …in total, as single move (not variation) right now, the Kabicuchi could be most difficult at the moment…combination wise I think Burner into Burner.

Gollito or Kiri, and why?

Kiri – cause it’s his turn!

Podersdorf or Fuerte?

Fuerte!!! (WIND!!!!)

At least half of wavesailors that dominate the sport nowadays are former freestyle athletes. What are your thoughts about this?

Freestyle athletes lost motivation to freestyle and needed the adrenaline waves can deliver. Got lazy a bit maybe… I think it’s a pity to waste talent and just not do freestyle anymore… however it’s understandable that at some point you want to stop training new moves and crash several hundred times until you are one step closer to the new move… easier and at some point more exciting is to go find waves and ride them – always adrenaline and loads of lifestyle there of course.. wave sailing is awesome!

Freestyle fins. Are they important or a chopped down wave fin is still OK?

VERY important!! Even though freestyle fins are very short, they need to perform well in order to give you the necessary speed and control to do those new freestyle tricks!! A chopped wave fin CAN be ok if you know what you’re doing, but it can not replace a properly developed freestyle fin in my eyes – I did a lot of testing when we developed our Trickfins (still only available as very expensive custom carbon fins – will produce cheaper in series soon) and the difference by just changing to a slightly different fin is enormous!

Would you ever leave Tirol (Innsbruck is  the European capital of snowboarding) on a powder day to drive to Lago di Garda for windsurfing?

Of course!!! (even though I am a bit spoiled with traveling to good windsurfing spots –back in the days, we drove to Lago di Garda in the middle of the winter, 1 Restaurant in all Torbole was open, sunset at 4pm, super cold air and water…. Not really that crazy anymore… hmm… well… maybe I should do that some time again… it was great times still)

After the book, the DVD, and the iphone application what should we expect from Mister Tricktionary?

I tend to keep projects a bit of a secret until they’re fully developed and almost ready for public… we will definitely focus on further developing the iPhone app, release a version for the iPad and hopefully also for Android devices (not 100% sure about Android yet, cause those things cost a LOT of money…). Then we have another project we’re working on right now… it will be cool for sure! so stay tuned for news!! ;)

Thanks Rossi!

Thanks for the Interview, keep up the good work with your blog – hope we meet on the water soon!!!

We have posted this on 13 Feb!