KTA News:
ISAF Conference Report - Olympic Future
It has been two very different weeks for the KTA with most of the team focused on the mission to bring together the 2013 World Course Race Championships over in China while elsewhere in Oman to be exact another KTA’er was at the ISAF Annual Conference. This is the gathering of all those people we don’t see too often at kite beaches, but they move our sport forward, deliberate our developments and proposals and will with any luck one day finally bring kiteboarding back into the Olympics. Its ok to say ‘bring back’ as after all we were there for a small blip of time which was just enough to bring kiteboarding to the eyes of the World. The good thing is that it looks promising once again for the future, it’s not set in concrete just yet but have faith and it could just happen!
Dateline Oman 15th November 2013 –ISAF President Carlo Croce
‘We want to support the Kite as an extra Olympic Medal in 2020. The new so called urban sports category would be the perfect platform for Kite – we want Kite to be in all our important sailing events; we were asked by the IOC not to change their system of evolution events. Again added value sports are needed for TV and this will be our answer’.
There we have it then and right from the top, kiteboarding adds value to sailing, a good way to be regarded then.
In presentations earlier in the week the IKA reported back on its meetings with the IOC. They have let it be known that they are still keen to see kiteboard join the Olympics, but not as another fleet racing event and have indicated that the short-track format is what they would prefer to see – part of that new ‘urban sports’ feel that President Croce refers to above.
Also on the table this week at the Conference for kiting is the hope to bring kite racing into the ISAF World Cup circuit, which until now has been the reserve of the Olympic classes only. The TT race class was another big topic as it seeks approval to be a full ISAF class endorsing it further as kiteboardings feeder class into the racing scene.
Both were well received and recommended throughout the week by the various sub-committees that first needed to approve such things. This now means that only one step remains and that is for the ISAF Council itself to have the final say and vote. This will have happened by the end of play on the 16th November.