Hannover
What has long been a tourist magnet in Munich should also become one in Hanover. An artificial wave was now opened on the line. At the weekend it is the venue for the German Rapid Surfing Championship.
Surfing enthusiasts can now also get on their boards in Hanover: The line wave near the Lower Saxony state parliament has been officially inaugurated.
At the start of the opening weekend, professional show surfers showed what the standing river wave has to offer, as could also be seen on a live stream on the Internet. The German championship in “rapid surfing”, i.e. surfing on an artificial wave, also takes place there on Saturday and Sunday. From Monday the first amateurs can swing onto the surfboards.
It is an indescribable feeling to finally be able to surf the Leinewelle after ten years and a lot of hours of voluntary work, said the chairman of the Leinewelle eV association, Heiko Heybey. There was no public funding for the project. Instead, the association looked for sponsors and collected a total of two million euros in donations. The total costs of the wave amount to around 2.5 million euros – originally around 1.4 million euros were estimated.
The model for the project was the Munich Eisbachwelle, which has long been a tourist attraction. The 8.6 meter wide line wave is now the widest artificially generated wave in Germany, said the energy provider and Main sponsor Energy with. It is equipped with a hydraulic weir that can be controlled via an app.
This allows the wave to be aligned in different ways, which also makes surfing easier when the water level is low. A so-called fish pass was also installed – a structural device on flowing water that allows fish to cross obstacles such as weirs. Previously, the Hanover Fishing Association had unsuccessfully sued against the project on the line.
