Postby edt » Fri Jul 15, 2016 4:31 pm
all styles have been used by all kiters since the beginning of kiteboarding. They are commonly called "old school" (airstyle) and new style (wakestyle) but if you look at videos of lou wainman 15 years ago he was doing all the handle passes pros today use. The start of the kiteboarding competition included big airs (the king bull king of the air) from the start of the sport, however, the competition moved towards more technically difficult tricks, that is the handle passes. While some might argue about it, it is more difficult to do a handle pass than to do a board off, so the interest was in creating a more technically difficult competition. Unfortunately it is not as pleasing to the spectators so three years or so ago red bull brought back king of the air which remains the most popular competition. If you go to a local competition you will still see guys busting out nice board offs and slides, but at the pro level handle passes has pretty much taken over.
I think there is a correction needed at the professional level. Yes it's nice to have technical tricks but it is also very important for a competition to be pleasing to the audience even if they don't know anything about kiteboarding and this means including huge jumps. That is the one thing that kiters can do that wakeboarders behind a boat, windsurfers or any other sport on the water can do and that's boost massive airs. That pleases the audience.
If you look at other sports competitions they are highly aware of how pleasing it is to the audience, you look at how basketball introduced the shot clock back in the 1950's before that you could have a world championship where the score was in the teens. Unacceptable. Or look at the tour de france, when the recumbent bicycles were banned back in the 1930's yeah sure a recumbent can be faster due to less drag, but most people in the world don't ride recumbents we ride uprights and the organizers knew to remain popular they wanted at least to have the riders look like they were riding the same sorts of bicycles that we use. So pretty much in every sport the effort has been to create a sport which is a good product, an entertaining product.
Kiteboarding is a niche sport, so they really haven't tried too hard to expand their audience, I mean with the exception of that red bull king of the air competition. Instead the emphasis has been on technically difficult tricks where everything happens very fast and close to the water, which is good for scoring competitions but not that good for the audience.
At least that's what I gather. I remain hopeful for the future of kiteboarding, that we go a little bit away from tricks which are specifically designed to very hard so it's easier to score (or ones which carry "risk" whatever that means) and instead try to provide a more balanced approach which gives the audience a good show and high entertainment value even for non-kiters.
Right now it's very uncertain what the future holds, all these 3 and 4 letter organizations, the end of the PKRA, Richard Branson getting involved, the snub of the olympics, whatever happens with the internation sailing organization the ISAF and the competitions. So for now who knows what is gonna happen.