A good friend is getting paid to research the future of sport in Australia. He reckons there is trend toward extreme sports. He's asked for my opinion.
What do you reckon?
Will kitesurfing be a sport in the Rio 2016 Olympics? Why?
For me the future is adventure riding in the waves.
I'm bored with backwards and forwards, can't be arsed with tricks, like a decent bit of air time.
But the thought of downwinding through epic locations and hitting various surf breaks in a session really appeals to me.
Olympic sport criteria:
"The sport must be practiced by men in at least 75 countries and four continents, and by women in at least 40 countries and three continents.
The sport in question must have a governing International Federation in order for the IOC to officially recognize them as a sport.
The governing body has to then file an application to become a demonstration sport. After that, the sport may file another application to officially become a fully recognised Olympic sport."
It is well known and debated that in order to keep olympic sport relevant and interesting to a mass TV audience (think sponsorship $$) there is need for change to new and modern sports. Older, more traditional, sports with less TV viewer appeal are in danger of being removed.
TV audiences like sports with clear winners and losers. Kite course racing, like other yacht racing events is the most likely contender for an Olympic sport. Freestyle may have less appeal due to the subjective nature of the judging.
The trend is towards more people sitting on couches watching extreme sports or playing "sports" via playstation, wii, xbox etc.
Among the few people who participate in sports like kitesurfing, an even smaller percentage participate at a level that could be called extreme.
If windsurfing's experience is anything to go by, kiting at the olympics will not be even slightly extreme, unless extremely light winds count. Many great windsurfers have trained and trained and trained to show up at venues where they get to slog around in 10 knots if they're lucky.
There's a basic disconnect between the Olympic (pro-establishment, patriotic) ethos and the ethos of sports like skateboarding and the more "extreme" aspects of kiting (anti/non-establishment, highly individualistic).
Kite racing may be at the olympics in 2016. It will not represent kiting as most kiters know it.
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My 2 Cents, Re future and Kiting related, not 100% on topic, but kinda related. Bring it on!
Future and Kite surfing related...
This is happening now, kite bots that can carry 2 people and gear across a field designed from kite design related tech. I might get one to play with ( think human muscle, but compressed air and light weight bladders and Dacron, very strong, very light, and cheaper than a metal robot )
Think a robot leg designed from similar construction, light weight, cheep to make compressed air pockets that mimic muscle contractions, and a crap load cheaper and lighter than a metal robot leg. This is already happening now, should have handy caped people walking in the next year or 2
Kites are faster than sails ( speed kites VS Wind surfers, so kite speed boats are being developed now.
Good to see kite design tech evolving into other things.
what is the future .........i can see more ....mooore time on the water .......moooore(as long as there is more its allgood)
hopefully it has peaked and will begin to decline like windsurfing did.
unfortunately the easier it gets, the more idiots with no water sense or respect for the weather take it up. this sport gets more cringeworthy every season.
i know more kiters equals cheaper gear in the long run, but i for one would prefer to pay a bit more for kites in return for a few more uncrowded years at my local.
selfish? yep. but look at surfing- popularity hasn't helped your average punter, only made it harder for them to get a wave
Future of kiting I can see is a return to big air but performing wake style tricks, that young dude Ewan was showing bit of this. Also I see surfing to become more closer to surfing but with a kite on that front. As far as competition goes I don't know, nor do I care. The technology advances seem to have lost the exponential part of the curve. A bug can only crawl so fast it will need a need a huge metamorphism ( hence thie butterfly analogy) to take flight again.
As far as an extreme sport, nah not any more. Maybe Bens huge wave kiting is extreme and only a few will attempt but people from all ages and all walks of life are doing this sport now, not extreme anymore, the technology has progressed so far.
But is has far more potential to evolve than windsurfing. Time will tell. I mean I just had a mellow session on my 2012 rebel, 13 to 17 knots, and I thought how can they makes these kites any better? I'm sure crew on all brands may have thought the same thing. I mean what else do you need..
One thing is for sure, kites will get more and more specific to each rider style.
It'd be cool to have it in the olympics but with that is a whole heap of other can of worms. The focus of Kite surfing should be on FREEDOM and enjoyment of just getting out there because you can. Less thinking and more kiting.
To me, olympic sport should really be confined to track and field and swimming individual type sports involving gentically gifted, totally dedicated athletes displaying ultimate capabilites of the human body in a directly measurable way. Team sports, golf, sailing, bmx etc, nothing wrong with them, but not olympic stuff.
i can see more ....mooore time on the water .......
Thanks for all the comments. I've summed it so far....
For inclusion in the Olympics there are a few hurdles for kiting. Kiting needs specific conditions eg. wind, and extreme sportspeople don't have an Olympic ethos but are more individualistic and nonconformist (djdojo). Both of these hurdles have been 'jumped' in the Winter Olympics by half pipe snowboarding. Then again many of these hurdles also apply to surfing which isn't an Olympic sport. As Meatpie said, if we want to know the future of kiting, we should look at surfing as an example.
Griffinkites makes a good point, that for the armchair viewer its not easy to see a clear winner. This also applies to surfing and snowboarding. So - why has snowboarding become and Olympic sport and surfing has not?
As for the sport itself diverging into different styles like boat racing (KIT33R) and style specific kites (eppo) - good points. I think this could be the future. Will divergence make kiting more or less mainstream?
For us kiters the future of kiting probably means accepting that our fav spots are now full of unfriendly gumbys, lets just hope it means something positive too like cheaper gear and improved equipment performance.
Please keep the comments coming!
Snowboarding became an olympic sport because traditionally they already had nordic events with set courses that could be repeated. All you needed was the snow. Pretty easy to determine when that will happen in Alpine areas where most of the Winter games are played. With so many people jumping the snowboard phenom and the crowd pleasing factor that you can get up close to watch these events made it an easy transition. (Not to mention the big industry behind it)
Surfing cannot be repeated ever....There are no two waves alike. Too many outside forces to consider, and many cities that vie for one the worlds greatest crimes each four years usually does not have decent enough surf beaches to attract the crowds etc.
You can tell I am not a fan of building mega cities every four years just to host an event, when later many of those buildings become redundant. The money could be better spent helping humanity, revitalizing crumbling cities in order to bring back a better sense of positive community spirit....
sorry for the OT rant....
"He reckons there is trend toward extreme sports."
Ha what a joke .The most extreme thing that the cotton wool generation do is drive to the gym and spend and hour there, also if it aint an instant thing , they're not generally interested . (ie Gen cotton wool = not interested doing the hard yards )
$2000+ raceboards and $3000+ kites - maybe "affordable" to those on olympic committees but what a crock of **** this is too most kiters. Kiteboarding and the olympics are flawed in so many ways, if you look at the list of kiters/companies supporting the olympics - they all have more of a financial motive than most - well that is the olympics today and that is why it sux.
Hmmmm, GM and his wife did split up, she only took about 50 mil and started an eco golf resort/retreat, or something along those lines. GM took several hundred million and kept a share in the company he and his wife founded. Last I heard he had purchased Mt Woodgee and built himself the Pad....I think he is way too smart to be broke.....
In saying that, I hated the way he commercialized surfing. I built some offices for him when I first moved to oz in the 80s..Back then the clothes were made in oz, were well made, ( I still have a jumper that is still wearable from that time), and he hired local people. Then it all changed and went to hell.....everything went offshore to china etc, the profit margins sailed through the roof, and we as consumers were left with the high price tag and shops in every mall selling the brand.
The upside of it was that they sponsored Shane Dorian and let him just surf around the globe. Watching him is always special....
The rest of the commercialism just sucks and made me want to walk away from "the surfing culture that is so mainstream now." I left sunny qld for a bit of paradise down the south coast 18 years ago where often I have to search for people to surf with. Not so mainstream here, good vibes generally, and now we have a nice kiting community as well.
can't argue with that, perhaps that is why I chose to live and raise my kids in the country. Kiting has given me a new lease on the ocean and the ability to explore waves in a different way.
sure wish surfing didn't go so mainstream but I can't blame people or media or greed for people wanting to try it and live the lifestyle.
If you want to follow the crowd and surf with them, then you deserve to be frustrated. I live in a sydney suburb and can surf pretty much on my own or close to it, sometimes in world class waves. Look, search, seek and ye shall find.
The future of kitesurfing is maniacs jumping over large, solid (preferably on fire) objects in 40 knots+
Maybe also guys using kites to sail across ice at 150km/h+
(That is, in terms of what will actually get media coverage and red bull money)
