screw isaf & olympics - how do we get into x games?

[v15guy]

So as I face-planted for the umteenth time trying to get up on a kiteboard last week, salt water leaked in where my brain should be and shorted out anything useful going on. Result was a question - how do we get kiteboarding, skiffs, foiling moths, or whatever into the X games?

Seems like a much more useful thing to try than beating our heads against the very dense olympic/isaf wall. I'm guessing there are hundreds of posts on this already but my incompetence in using the search feature caused me to miss them all!

ps I am using "we" and "our" in the classic royal sense - as I have absolutely no intention of doing anything further to accomplish the above suggestion

 

[us7070]

There is very little kiteboard racing going on. I know they do it in SF, but as far as I know, that's the only place on the planet with anything approaching a regular series.

In nearly all kiteboarding events, the competition is about style - so, it's more like gymnastics and other events that are scored by judges. It's hard to see how it would fit within the Sail Racing events. Some competitions are about who can jump the highest, but those are a minority.

I have to say, I've watched a lot of kiteboarding, and it gets pretty boring after a while.

 

[DRDNA]

Maybe if we leaped a pool of Bull Sharks as part of a slalom race...... Then maybe it's exciting 'nuff for X games. Watching a moto X guy do a backwards flip on his bike w/out being attached is a tad more , umm, sketchy than a windward/ leeward boat race.

 

[kanaka]

Forget about the X Games. Go for expanding the Gorge Games sailing events. Started as an reaction to the artificial and manipulated nature of the X Games, the Gorge Games originally boasted "all natural". Still is, even in the re-incarnated version that came off this year.

Talk to the CGRA folks (running the sailing events), the new promoter of the Games and develop a grass roots movement to get class championships associated with the Gorge Games and you'll go far.

But it won't happen on this forum. It will happen with phone calls, letters and hard commitments from individual classes to provide volunteer support and help develop sponsorship for the events.

As far as kiteboarding, the longest running amateur kiteboarding event in the country is held in Stevenson WA, just across the river from the staging area for the CGRA events. It has a ton of prizes, a super venue and launches a few riders into the pros each year. This started years before the races in the Bay. There are occasional races in Hood River. It would be a natural fit with the Games, if Slingshot decided it wanted to become somewhat swallowed up by the Games.

There are good points and bad points to joining the Games. The 49'ers were one of the original Gorge Games classes and now that the prizes are gone, I don't think they've even bothered to show the last three years.

 

[tyler]

There is very little kiteboard racing going on. I know they do it in SF, but as far as I know, that's the only place on the planet with anything approaching a regular series.

They race on kiteboards????



Its only a matter of time til Xgames picks it up.

As for extreme sailing? not so much... Maybe windsurfing

 

[dogwatch]

Only the profoundly humourless can hear the words "extreme sport" without sniggering.

 

[pitdoctor]

foilers on a figure 8 style track might be exciting enough, with enough risk of carnage for the xgames crowd.

 

[lukepiewalker]

It's not the crowd you have to convince, it's the TV people...

 

[tyler]

Forgot to mention. That AC coverage was good last summer. maybe in the next decade we'll get some more.

 

[JAB]

I'm not sure how it happened - probably through the CGRA guys, but the 505 North Americans were part of the Gorge Games this year. We got some nice shirts, and there were TV cameras on the course on Thursday and Sunday. I think this is a great thing for the class! Look for coverage sometime in August.

 

[BigUnit]

I remember seeing a show about 10 years ago on kiteboarding. The enthusiastic kiteboarder said something along the lines of (but he included the word "dude" more times than me):

"Kiteboarding is the most extreme of extreme sports because it combines elements of ALL the extreme sports. If the current growth rate continues, it will be the most popular in the world within 5 years."

A couple of things:

1. When was kite flying ever considered extreme? (perhaps Ben Franklin)

2. He was way off base on his growth projections.

My point is, the x-games are a fuckin joke - barely above the level of professional wrestling in the legitimate sports stakes. Leave it to the joke "sports" that are judged. I'd rather bang my head against the ISAF/Olympic wall for the rest of my life than to be associated with the pre-pubescent wannabes of the x-games.

 

[Derek Grebe]

X Games format generally means packing as many folks with silly hats into an Arena to watch whatever is being passed off as 'extreme'

difficult to grandstand foiling moths and kite boards.

you cant guarantee wind like indoor windsurfing, and you have to guarantee an event for the huge media coverage and muppet circus that goes with it.

skateboarding, and even summer snowboarding events happen because they can throw enough money at the problem. you cant solve wind on a wide enough scale for kites and foilers

so the silly hat brigade will have to be content with skaters and boarders for now!

 

[* photoboy]

Some thought on the matter...

The recently held 18' Skiff event at Pier 39 is on the right track. Put a slalom course right up on the beach so people don't seem so insulated from the action,

Put heats of 3-4 sailors on a tight course with 7-8 bouy gates, an outside mark and have them run 3 laps per heat, like boarder cross. Hire a good film crew and

a good PR crew and get some adverstisors attracted. The rest will sort itself out.

I know a good photog, ftr...

 

[Madmax]

Lots of this will get us in the X games!