| The 73-year-old Floridian kitesurfer |
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| Tuesday, 24 January 2012 10:47 |
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Louis Gomez is 73 years old and he's an avid kitesurfer. Yes, it's not 37, but 73 years. This former software engineer for JP Morgan Chase discovered kiteboarding when he was 65 and decided to give it a go. "I told my wife that sport just didn't exist when I was younger," Mr. Gomez tells The Wall Street Journal. "To heck with that, I wanted to try it because I wanted to do it. It was a challenge." The young wind addict had his first contact with kitesurfing on Lake Geneva, Switzerland, eight years ago and, there you go, he went for it. Despite the requirements of the sport, Louis Gomez was already a sportsman. He was a skier and racquetball player so his joints were prepared for strong impacts. In 2008, Gomez had to undergo knee-replacement surgery but a few months later he got back to the waters for weekly training schemes. He lives in Pinecrest, Florida. "I could only kite board for 20 minutes at a time when I started. I was sore all the time. But your body gets conditioned, no matter what age you are," explains Louis Gomez. "Now I have less arthritis. Exercise takes the pain away." Our kitesurfing hero might be chasing titles, in the next years. He trains between two and three hours a day and goes for the freestyle tricks. Big airs and spins are the soup of the day. Louis Gomez has his diet. Fruit smoothies, nuts and vitamin powders, less sugar and salt, Greek yogurt, homemade bread and applesauce instead of butter are his kitesurfing ingredients for a wind sports' life.
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