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Dreams do come true sometimes! Before Yolanda Freites de Brendt ("Yoli") started her career in windsurfing, she had been working as a bank employee in Venezuela. But then Yoli fell in love with German freestyle guru and instructor Tom Brendt (who once was a mechanic). And she fell in love with windsurfing. Yoli: "I came to the beach one day and I saw Remko de Weerd sailing. That showed me, that with a lot of practice on the water, I'll be able to learn everything. And that's what I'm always aiming for, to sail with the supereasy style like Remko and Cheo Diaz and powerful like Ricardo Campello." And just to make her dream complete, Yoli is also working as a model from time to time.
Yoli, born on the Venezuelan island of Margarita, had discovered her love for the sport back in 2002. And with a spot like El Yaque in her backyard and freestyle pros like Cheo Diaz, Gollito Estredo und Remko de Weerd on the water, freestyle windsurfing was just the thing to do. Yoli started training on a daily basis, quit her job as a key accountant at the bank. Ever since Yoli has been training the coolest and most up-to-date freestyle moves - and she does (almost) all of them! Always positive, always smiling, by the way.
Together with Sara Quita Offringa and Laure Treboux, Yoli is part of the probably most promising trio in womens freestyle windsurfing ever, ready to take over the thrones of former role models like Daida Moreno. Tom Brendt still remembers the day when Yoli learned that Fanatic and North Sails were going to sponsor her. Tom: "It brought her close to tears, because a dream had come true." Besides competing on the PWA world tour, Yoli had quite some appearances in Venezuelan media, doing photoshoots (both editorial and commercial modeling) for fashion labels and lifestyle magazines. Like most other girls on the PWA tour Yoli still cannot make a living from competing (and modelling) alone, and works as a windsurf instructor in El Yaque and Tarifa, too (Planet Windsurf, for more info see also www.windsurflabor.de).
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photos: Tom Brendt © windgirls 2007 |
