Published: Friday, 17th October, 2008 08:30
Life's one big challenge for daredevil Louise
By Fiona Howard
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BRAVE: Louise Adam
LOUISE Adam stepped off a cliff last week and broke a rib — all in the name of duty.
Former Helensburgh woman Louise is one of the main organisers of the world famous Tiree Wave Classic wind surfing event and the cliff-hanger came as part of a press trip.
The 32-year-old said: “We took them on a tour of the island and showed cliff jumping and coasteering.
“The coasteering just involves scrambling over rocks and in and out of the sea but with cliff jumping you do jump off a cliff into the sea.
“Tiree is quite a flat island and the cliffs are not really massive but the highest is a 30 foot drop which is pretty scary.
She added: “It was terrifying and you are supposed to stand straight and just step off but I was so scared I was hunched up and hit the water with such a crack that I broke a rib!”
When Louise is not stepping off cliffs she works for marketing and events company GMFCo Ltd, where she is one of a team organising the classic — which attracts people from all over the country.
This year, 43 windsurfers were taking part in the event, 23 professionals and the rest amateurs — including Helensburgh man Iain Mackenzie.
Last year the Tiree Wave Classic was a world championship event but sponsorship was not finalised in time for this year.
However, Louise and her colleague Andy Grooms still have a massive amount of organising to do in setting up catering, rescue teams, judges and beach crew for an event which attracts hundreds of spectators, almost doubling the island’s population for its duration.
Louise added: “There are two styles of windsurfing competition, slalom which is a race over distance and wave riding which is rather more extreme.
“It is more like surfing and the competitors do jumps and loops and other tricks. It’s a bit like skateboarding on water.
“But because we are trying to attract other windsurfers we have organised another event this year — the Coll Challenge which is a triathlon.
“Fifteen competitors have entered and they have to run two kilmetres on Tiree, then windsurf to neighbouring Coll and then do a half marathon on mountain bikes around Coll forest.”
The events began on October 11 and run until October 18 to ensure that they get enough wind to run the competitions.
Louise said: “It’s been great this year but the last two years there was very little wind until the last day and we have had to try to get enough events run to get a winner.
“There can be a lot of just sitting around waiting for the wind.”
Louise has done a little windsurfing herself but is not hugely keen.
The challenge was sponsored by Caledonian MacBrayne, while the classic was backed by bodies including Argyll and Bute Council.
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