GOLLITO ESTREDO: NEW CHAPTER
GOLLITO ESTREDO: NEW CHAPTER
GOLLITO ESTREDO: NEW CHAPTER
From humble beginnings as the son of a fisherman in Venezuela, Gollito Estredo rose against the odds to become a professional windsurfer and to become one of the sport’s all-time greats, claiming the PWA Freestyle World Title an astonishing nine times. Now, he’s embracing a new challenge: wingfoiling. Axel Reese explores Estredo’s bold transition to the wingfoil tour and what lies ahead in this exciting new chapter.
Words: Axel Reese // Photos: Axel Reese / John Carter / Toby Bromwich / Wingfoil tour.
Gollito Estredo! Hardly any other name is as familiar to us as that of the now 34-year-old wingfoil pro, which is due to the fact that the Venezuelan has won an incredible nine world championship titles in windsurfing freestyle and has mastered windsurfing freestyle and is considered one of the greats of windsurfing. Then, four years ago, the big switch: instead of the Windsurf Freestyle World Cup, he entered the Wingfoil World Cup!
Axel Reese takes a look back at Gollito’s career.
Gollito grew up in the windy fishing village of El Yaque on the Venezuelan island of Isla Margherita.
At the age of 12, something clicked for him, because in the wake of the emerging windsurfing tourism in this very fishing village of El Yaque, windsurfing was the only thing on his mind. His father had long since left at the time and so he shared a –only one- room with his grandmother, mother and siblings.
In this respect, it is a childhood that is hard for us Europeans to comprehend. Wishes for windsurfing equipment were purely illusory, as there were hardly any financial resources. There was only what you really needed to live, i.e. just enough to eat and a room for the family to live in.
And there was really only one future, that of a fisherman, which is what all the boys in the village learnt. And if windsurfing tourism hadn’t come to this small village in the early 1990s, Gollito would have been one of those fishermen, just like his father and grandfather.
For the children and young people of the village, it just meant going to school “for a bit” and then hanging out at the surf stations along the always windy village and being able to help out a little.
School and windsurfing instead!
Gollito, just 12 years old at the time, would sit on the fence of the Planet Allsports centre every afternoon and watch the windsurfing tourists perform tricks and jumps, before imitating exactly what he had just seen on the old windsurfing board and sail at the surf station! And so the repertoire of freestyle tricks of guys like Gollito, Cheo Diaz, Ricardo Campello and others exploded. Of course, because on the one hand, the spots in the southern Caribbean are blessed with wind all year round and on the other hand, school was taken less and less seriously by the boys, as there was no compulsory education on Isla Margherita at the time. As a result, Gollito’s seriousness about going to school dwindled quite quickly, as neither as a fisherman nor as a labourer at the surfing stations was schooling urgently needed. Gollito quickly joined the extended windsurfing team of Fanatic and North Sails and at the age of just 14! he took part in his first Freestyle World Cup in Bonaire and achieved a good result, which gave him a ticket to the World Cup team and paved the way for a great professional windsurfing career.
The first time in cold Europe
Gollito visited Germany for the first time during the German SURF Magazine “test week” in May 2004. On the island of Fehmarn, he receives his first windsurfing equipment from the sponsor as well as his first wetsuit, his first thick jacket and a warm hat!
The departure into a new world, which was almost impossible for most young people of the same age on his island. For Gollito, however, it was also a challenge to have to learn a lot, such as a new language, the organisation of World Cup events, travelling with stays in hotels and, finally, the seriousness of working professionally. During a photo shoot that we did over a week in El Yaque in December 2004, either Gollito or his mate Cheo Diaz were not at the start in the morning. Normal for these guys, who were already well paid at the time, and so abnormal for serious Europeans!
More and more successes soon followed and Gollito was able to win his first world title in windsurfing freestyle at the age of 17! Even back then, one of the keys to his success was simply playing in so many situations and learning even the most difficult freestyle tricks, far removed from his probably non-existent sense of pain.
Gollito dominated windsurf freestyle for more than a decade and became the world’s most successful windsurf freestyler of all time, shaping the discipline like no other. Four years ago, he switched sides and joined the Wingfoil World Cup!
Axel Reese Interview with Gollito Estredo:
Your windsurfing career started on the beach of El Yaque on Margherita Island. That was in 2001 and we got to know each other because you spent so much time sitting on the fence of the Planet Allsports surf centre and watching the windsurfers.
GE: “Yes, I actually sat there every afternoon and watched the windsurfers so that I could copy their moves an hour later (laughs). I usually learnt these tricks quite quickly after a few attempts.”
Your parents weren’t able to buy you windsurfing equipment. You helped out at the centres and were then allowed to use the equipment.
GE: “Yes, it was a hard and exhausting time. Our family had to see that they could get by somehow and prioritise things, which of course didn’t include “windsurfing”. I was already so “full of windsurfing” at the age of 11 or 12 and wasn’t interested in anything else apart from school. And our village of El Yaque was also booming thanks to windsurfing tourism, which developed quite suddenly, with hotels, windsurfing centres and so on springing up all over the place.
I was allowed to help out a bit every day at the Planet Allsports centre, preparing boards and sails for the windsurfers and hosing them down with fresh water after the sessions. And in return, I was allowed to pull a small wave board off the shelf and learn lots of tricks! It was a great time.”
Gollito dominated windsurf freestyle for more than a decade and became the world’s most successful windsurf freestyler of all time, shaping the discipline like no other. Four years ago, he switched sides and joined the Wingfoil World Cup!
How did you become a professional windsurfer in the years that followed?
GE: “I came to the attention of the Fanatic and North Sails brands and got the opportunity to compete in Freestyle World Cups. I was able to achieve better and better results and so it took the course of a very successful career as a professional windsurfer.”
Between 2006 and 2018, you won an almost unbelievable nine freestyle world championship titles. You dominated freestyle almost at will, you were the almost unassailable dominator, weren’t you?
GE: “I tried to keep windsurfing freestyle at a very high level and at the same time to push it, in other words, to keep progressing. So I trained non-stop, pushing myself in as many locations as possible with epic freestyle conditions and trying to push the limits higher and higher. The goal was always to be on the podium and, ideally, to become world champion.”
Which you managed to do nine times! “Pushing the limits further up”, which freestyle moves did you invent?
GE: “They were the Pasko, the Culo, the Spock Culo and of course the Burner, to which I owe at least one World Championship title. There are also combinations of these moves.”
Which freestyle moves have you been able to adapt from windsurfing to wingfoiling?
GE: “Yes, that’s a good question, because one of the main reasons why I started wingfoiling was that I was able to pick up so many moves from windsurfing. For example, the backloop, the frontloop and the pushloop.
These are all jumps that I was able to learn very quickly while wingfoiling because I had already learnt them beforehand – i.e. while windsurfing.”
What only a few windsurfers know is that you have also kite-surfed at a World Cup level in strapless freestyle! You took part in the Kitesurf Strapless World Cup in Prea, Brazil, and when you saw your movements there, you could only imagine what you could have achieved with even more intensity.
GE: “And I was so motivated at the beginning. I did it alongside windsurfing for about three or four years and then lost motivation and then pushed windsurfing in the waves, “wavesailing”.”
And to look at the whole thing. So what do you have your heart set on, windsurfing, kitesurfing or wingfoiling?
GE: “It’s definitely wingfoiling. I still love windsurfing freestyle, but I stopped doing it so intensively about three years ago.”
That brings us to the here and now. From the windsurfing mecca of El Yaque on the Caribbean island of Isla Margherita, over many days in Hamburg, you’ve now made Lake Garda your home – now as a family man. Did wingfoiling bring you to this windsurfing metropolis?
GE: “Yes, Lake Garda is fantastic for wingfoiling and also for windsurfing freestyle and IQ foiling. And then of course my wife and our two children, as they all have Italian as well as Venezuelan citizenship. We wanted to live in a different place for a few years.”
Sorry, I had forgotten that you had also been very active in the Olympic windsurfing class, iQFOiL, for the past three years.
GE: “That was such a good experience for me! I took part in so many international iQFOiL regattas and learnt a lot about racing, which is now helping me a lot in wingfoil slalom.”
As I said, you’ve spent a lot of time on the wingfoil board in the last two years and take part in the Wingfoil World Cups in the Freestyle and FreeFly Slalom disciplines. And here too, your skills are at an absolute World Cup level.
GE: “To stay on the subject of wingfoil slalom, I learnt a lot in the windsurf iQFOiL class that I can now use in wingfoiling. It’s a completely different story in freestyle now, because the level is rising and rising and there’s no end in sight to this development. Teenagers are doing such crazy things on the water!”
What are your ultimate goals in wingfoiling?
GE: “I have the clear goal of finishing on the podium in the Wingfoil FreeFly Slalom.”
Talking about teenagers in freestyle: you entered the Windsurf World Cup in 2003 at the age of just 14. Many of your fellow competitors in the Wingfoil World Cup are teenagers today. How do you feel at the age of 34 compared to these guys?
GE: “I see it, I feel it! And I try to beat these “kids”, but it’s becoming increasingly difficult. At the end of the day, I understand that very well, because I was just as young once and did just as crazy things, there was no fear of serious falls and the associated pain! You had to be very young in freestyle to get to the top. You have to start at the age of maybe 11 or 12 and train a lot to make it into the top 5 or even onto the podium. And the current generation in wingfoil freestyle doesn’t need that much strength for the tricks.”
In other words, there is now also a gap to the hardcore tricks like a 1080, where you say, hey, these are tricks where I have to see if I can even keep up?
GE: “Let me put it another way, I’ve already seen such crazy tricks that I’m certainly not going to practise any more. Because you have to be even smaller and even lighter and have a mentality that still allows you to do these tricks, just like when I – you said it – entered the Windsurf Freestyle World Cup at the age of 14. But today? “I cannot train this kind of crazy tricks now!””
Your mate Ricardo Campello (windsurfing pro from El Yaque, three-time freestyle world champion and four-time vice world championship in the wave discipline, the ed.) has recently returned to El Yaque. Where will your journey take you?
GE: “Yes, we’ve just moved back to Venezuela. We live here in the town of Porlamar on the island of Margherita, not far from El Yaque. Porlamar is very convenient for us as a family and we have a house in El Yaque for the weekends.”
What are your long-term goals?
GE: “We see our centre of life here on Margherita. And I’m in the process of setting up a surf centre in El Yaque. I left my island a long time ago to come back to my island!”
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