Kite Scoop Forum

For the people that are against, I understand your concerns. But can you also see the good that can come from this? Yes its representing the "racing" aspect of the sport which is the opposite of what the Kitescoop stands for but the positives can outweigh the negatives if the cards are played right.

- Government support - Anytime there's government intervention into a sport there are positives and negatives but this is a good way to get access to areas that were no goes. Riders at commitees to have a foot to stand on when battling against your town council.

- Outside sponsorship - yes Redbull is great but there are plenty of other corporate sponsors that riders and events would love to get their hands on. "Sell out" or whatever you want, just imagine that the events you compete in have real prize money and corporate sponsors give you a living salary (I know half this scoop is a sponsored rider in one way or another and i have met most of you...don't tell me this doesn't interest you!)

-Trickle down effect - Yes there will be a wider support for the Olympic kite racing event but there will be plenty of events in wakestyle/freestyle/wave that companies would like to get a piece of the action.

Discuss,
Schmidy

[quote="Schmidy"]

-Trickle down effect - Yes there will be a wider support for the Olympic kite racing event but there will be plenty of events in wakestyle/freestyle/wave that companies would like to get a piece of the action.
/quote]

well if this was the case, why did olympia not help windsurfing. windsurfing almost died since they became olympic.
snowboarding didn't get any real push from olimpia either. it was rather overregulated and all the fis did was copy-n-paste the boardercross format to their skiercross and they eventually realiese that funparks are actually fun to ride, even with skis...

All good points

So you are saying you absolutely don't think that there will be an injection of money into our sport as a whole which will effect all disciplines? I would say that is a tough claim. But I must disagree if you think that after 98' Snowboarding in the Olympics that Burton didn't see a spike in their revenue. I am sure you were snowboarding well before the Olympics thought it was cool and most of the Scoop is probably on that same level (if they are old enough) but many people don't see that beyond their crew theres plenty of other people started to participate because they saw the media coverage which shadows over X-Games from a global stand point.

Windsurfing in the Olympics - I believe that one person/company "owning" the Olympic Race scene was the problem. I feel the RSX class was so removed from actual windsurfing that there was no connection between what you saw on TV and what people were actually doing. I feel that kite racing has some type of connection to Kiteboarding as a whole, which will allow events to include racing, freestyle/wakestyle and waves to better the sport in its entirety. It's no different to what PKRA has now, only that they could have better funding from governments and corporate sponsors simply because they have a discipline in their event thats an Olympic sport.

12 years working in windusty from grommit till now. I have never seen an RSX in real life. I see kite racers on a daily basis wherever I travel.

Dude, windsurfing sucks even more than kite racing! That's why

Windsurfing was the coolest thing in the 90s. Just like Kriss/Kross, MC Hammer and Wham. That doesn't mean they are still cool. They died, just like windsurfing died. Freestyle windsurfing in 30knots and 15 feet ways is cool, but other than that; It sucks!!

Kiteboarding is cool and will always be cool! That's why OL will bring more money to our sport and just like skiing and snowboarding, we'll see freestyle taking over in 2020

Just what I was going to say

It could go either way i guess, but haven't the olympics pushed the skill level on snowboarding even further after the half pipe was added?

Shaun white practiced tricks specifically to win the olympics (Double Mctwist 1260) and to up the ante. They still have snowboarding racing but it is not as popular, simply because is boring in comparison with the half pipe tricks.

The same could happen with kiteboarding, but it has to start somewhere.

its not going to start there.