Sunday, 16 July 2017 00:21
Lighter Breezes Reshuffle the Pack at TwinTip:Racing Europeans
Lighter breezes that nevertheless fuelled scintillating downwind slalom racing in the kiteboard TwinTip class saw some of the leaders who had dominated their divisions over the opening days come unstuck and slip down the order. In particular the US’s Daniela Moroz, the 16-year-old Formula Kite Foil world champion, ceded the overall lead after several poor heats put her down the order and threatened to derail her bid for the crown in the girls’ division of the International Kiteboarding Association (IKA) TT:R Kitesurf Europeans in southern Italy. On the fourth of the five-day competition being hosted on the flat waters off…
Saturday, 15 July 2017 02:07
Controversy Over New Refereeing as Racing Gets Cleaner and Margins Finer
Young kite racers and their parent-coaches appear to be struggling to get to grips with a new “referee” concept devised to cope with a huge number of short, sharp high-octane heats and the relentless pace of the TwinTip racing format. Organisers at the International Kiteboarding Association (IKA) TT:R European Championships in southern Italy have been deluged by some of the 112 riders from 21 countries demanding explanations for judging decisions on penalties for tangles or touches on obstacles to be jumped. Novice racers, or perhaps those more accustomed a traditional sailing process that allows them to register a written protest…
Friday, 14 July 2017 00:56
Battles at Top of Order at TwinTip Kite Race Tighten in Testing Conditions
Croatian teenager Martin Dolenc cemented his position at the top of the leader board at the kite racing TwinTip European Championships in southern Italy with another strong performance. But Dolenc, 17, leading the Open division after a long day on the blue Mediterranean waters in perfect breezes that climbed to around 17kts, found himself pushed ever harder as rivals dialled-in their skills in the new format. When the thermal breeze kicked in early afternoon on day two of the International Kiteboarding Association (IKA) TT:R European Championships, it fuelled intense close-fought racing over a remarkable 49 short, sharp heats lasting just…
Thursday, 13 July 2017 00:44
IKA TwinTip:Racing Europeans Marked by Drama and Upsets
The opening exchanges of the fast-paced kiteboarding twin-tip European championships in southern Italy delivered the expected high-drama that left some of the title favourites licking their wounds as they grappled with the new format and unfamiliar equipment. One of the biggest surprises came when the US’s Daniela Moroz, the 16-year-old Formula KiteFoil world champion, fell rounding the final mark as she was well clear and cruising to certain victory in the girls’ final. The crucial mistake after she had easily won her earlier two races in the tricky, shifting thermal breeze that eventually built to 14kts, put her down to…
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Sunday, 28 May 2017 08:19
Youth Olympic Games Format for Kiteboarding released
Kiteboarding will be showcased for the first time on the Olympic stage with a new and exciting discipline: Slalom / Boardercross.The format is following the ideas of the highly successful Winter Olympic Games disciplines of ski and snowboard boardercross, where riders follow a set track with Obstacles they need to jump over. The whole competition is held in multiple elimination series, where only the best riders advance from round to round until the final.The IKA and the World Sailing Youth Olympic Games working party have been working on the final details of the format since the confirmation of the discipline…
Monday, 20 March 2017 18:08
'Yo' Pudla and Jingle Chen dominate the open mens and womens division, Tio takes the boys title while Chen also claimes the girls event
The 2017 TwinTip:Racing Asian Championships came to an end yesterday, with plenty of racing action in all divisions.Run for the first time completely in the event format which will also be used in the 2018 Youth Olympic Games in Argentina when kiteboarding will make its Olympic debut, the youth riders showed that they can beat most of the open men and women competitors.The slalom/boardercross format requires equipment control and technical skills more than anything else to achieve top speeds and controlled jumps over the floating obstacles. This puts equipment choice into the background, making this event especially affordable for the…
Friday, 17 March 2017 03:31
'Yo' Narapichit Pudla and Jingle Chen extend their lead at the 2017 TwinTip:Racing Asian Championships
Winds began early this morning in Pranburi, and the crew made short time of pumping kites and getting the first rounds of racing underway, fearing that a strange forecasted weather front would move in early in the afternoon and kill the wind.Riders took to the water to continue what was started in yesterday’s downwind slalom course, but today’s racing brought a new challenge: the introduction of Boardercross. 2 sets of Boardercross jumps were laid out within the slalom course, where riders were required to make successful jumps over the obstacles or face disqualification from the race. It certainly made for…
Thursday, 16 March 2017 05:16
Philippines' Chriistian Tio dominates the boys fleet at the 2017 TTR Asian Championships
Today marked the first day we have seen the future Youth Olympic course in action, and it was indeed a sight to see. The downwind slalom course was raced in 8 man fleets, with rider’s zig zagging back and forth from the beach right in front of a crowd of impressed onlookers.Sailing races of any kind, and that includes kiteboarding in this case, can at times be rather detached from the spectators on the beach- by nature many courses will be set far out to sea, or designed in such a way that the fleet often splits direction right at…
Wednesday, 15 March 2017 17:29
2017 IKA TwinTip:Racing Asian Championships kick off in Pranburi, Thailand
The long awaited opener to the 2017 TwinTip:Racing season in the lead up to next years Youth Olympic Games has arrived and with it brings a combination of many firsts.The week-long event organized by KTA (Kiteboard Tour Asia) brings together both the Asian Continental Championships and Thai National Series. The event also for the first time sees the new Youth Olympic TT:R race format which all eyes are on and promises to provide some highly entertaining racing as the week progresses.Proceedings kicked off over the weekend with the Moose Thailand Kiteboarding Championships running ahead of the Continentals. It would turn…
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