I wanted to make a longer post about the event so that others will know what to expect. So here goes:
The cost of the event was the cost of the hotel (likely to be ~110-130 €/night for a 2 person room, ~70 €/night for 1 person) + 30€ for covering the cost of the event. Breakfast and dinner were served at the hotel and were included in the cost, all of the lunch time meals were organized in one way or another. So, you really don't need to worry about food unless you want to eat elsewhere. All in all, not a bad price for everything included, the airfare was the most expensive part of the trip.
Pep generally didn't share an agenda other than the day before, so I will tell you now what we did, so you can know what to expect.
We arrived at the airport on Thursday and took a taxi to Sant Antoni (28 €).
Thursday 4PM: Went to Sant Josep to Club JASA to throw stones at a single balearic target. Took the public bus, 4€ roundtrip. Threw 2 stones in turn to warm up ( a few rounds) and then had 2 rounds of 5 stones. Uwe did well. The rest of us choked
. Edit: I forgot! Sarosh did well too, he came in 3rd!
Friday: A bus that was just for the event (no cost) picked us up.
11AM: We went to a school at 11AM to do some demonstrations for some school kids. This was actually a very small part of the time, and only 2 demos were actually done and mostly handled by the local folks. We were there for about 2 hours, the rest of the time just messing around throwing at a single target and at walls, trying each others slings, etc.
3-5PM: Boat tour from Sant Antoni, around the northern part of the island out to Ses Margalides. I quite enjoyed this.
5:30-6PM: Went to a beach that would make any slinger salivate that was near the airport. Excellent. (a few of us went back later). Arguably one of the best 30 minutes of the whole event. More on this later.
6:30-8PM: Cultural event and welcome. We watched a traditional dance put on by a historical group and had a welcome speech from some representatives who helped support the event.
Saturday: ~9-10AM: We had to change hotels because the one we were in was closing for the season. Pep mentioned that this won't happen again next year.
~10AM:Event Bus to a school in San Joan for the first tennis ball round, lots of available warm up before, but once the competition was about to start, each competitor, in competition order, could take 5 more warm up throws. Then you had your 2 rounds of 5 throws. Then we had lunch about 1 hours later at the school on tables outside. They ordered paella and salad that was delivered for us. The gaps inbetween were filled with slinging talk and lots of slinging tennis balls
On this competition round Modesto scored 14 points and Diego Camuñas scored 13 and I think Uwe did 12.
~3PM: Bus back to a beach near Sant Antoni for stones. Same rules as with tennis balls. We randomly warmed up then at the competition start, 5 to warm up and then 2 rounds of 5. I think Modesto did 10. Channing did well, 9 I think. I don't recall other people's scores.
Sunday:
9AM we left for....I don't recall what it was called, it was next to a big sports arena... But we set up to throw stones, again same rules. Again, Uwe, Modesto, Channing all did pretty well.
11-12AM: Left for San Carlos for lunch and tennis balls in a public area. Lunch was a bit hectic so many of us went to another restaurant. Then we ended with tennis balls rounds.
After every event, tennis balls, or stones, trophies for the 10 throws were given (I personally think this is a bit excessive, maybe 1 for tennis balls, one for stones and one for overall.
Monday: My wife and I, Archaic Arms and his folks, Sarosh, Mersa, all went to Castell d'Eivissa for a few hours just to see something historical (the USA just doesn't have old stuff), then had lunch and afterwards took a taxi to the beach near the airport. We stayed for probably close to 3.5 hours just chuckin' stones into the sea. It was glorious.
The best part about this whole event was meeting the people, hands down. Meeting all these people that I've known for years only through this site was a real honor. I don't know anyone else that can understand the obsession that I have with this obscure sport other than these gentlemen. The discussions that we were able to have would have taken months through medium such as this site and we could have it in minutes. And then we continued that for 4 days. It was truly incredible. One of the best experiences of my life, for sure. Thank you all who attended for making it such a great experience.
I certainly want to try to organize something here in the USA now. There are definitely improvements that could be made and I can now see a lot of what is needed for an event like this to be successful.
Hopefully that helps if you are on the fence about it. In my opinion, if you are obsessed with slinging enough that people around you roll their eyes when you mention it, you should probably try to make it to this event at least once.
As far as performance in the competition goes, everyone who was there for the first time did pretty poorly, myself included. Having to shoot 5 shots essentially cold is much more difficult than I had thought it would be. Plus there are a bit of nerves from fact that it is a competition, but I think that will fade with more competition experience. But C_A, you weren't kidding about performance. Excellent, very accurate slingers were doing very poorly in this format. It was certainly an eye-opening experience in that regard. I didn't fully understand what you meant until experiencing it myself.
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International slinging event Ibiza 2022 (Read 8263 times)
