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I suggest an obstacle course, including some waves, a view inflatables to jump over an slalom or tight consecutive turns, all in one race. In order to avoid tangles, racers would have to start one by one about 10 seconds appart.

With a diverse obstacle race specialized equipment can be weeded out. No one would use a race board to jump obstacles or carve turns in shallow water.

Toby wrote:The KTA offers twintip races...and I think it is a really good idea, since it attracts riders of all ages, who want to race for fun.
Anyone can win! Awesome!

I think it is a great idea, and has some benefits:
- everyone can participate
- less gear to travel with

Downside is only that you maybe cannot race in 5 knots...

What do you think?

Yes......but how long will it take before the industry or some brands will Devellop special TT raceboards ( see flyrace) at 1000€ a piece, wit this board you will grab to a racekite too another cut into the Budget.
Or you will have to make restrictions, no racegear allowed.....but will kites like Edge from ozone and The other brands be considered as racekites?

It will be a thin line....or you create one design classes with an open class on the side, and not an open Class with restrictions, full open it only benefits the mdevelopment of new and better gear
My 2 cents
Dude

Exactly !

We see this here, where there has been a race series of 4-6 stops every year.

Directional and TT class.

To start with the TT class was just "everybody" mostly locals who was nearby at the event who participated just for fun - as it IS fun.

Then some found that with much bigger TT's, with special outlines - they could smoke every other TT on the water on the upwind legs.
So now it has been a goal in itself for these, to ride TT races and even travel to do this, eventhough they maybe "should" ride in the directional class on directionals instead - but they might be really slow here so they want to stay in top in the TT class.
The same old story as with every A/B/C class at events

And what about bigger fins, retractable fins, or daggerboards on TT's a la the Flysurfer - is it allowed and where is the limit ?

Those of us having a freeride raceboard cant compete in any of the classes, as we would be smoked in the directional class with big boards and huge fins, and we would win easily and not be allowed in the "TT" class.

So I am a bit more sceptical about the TT races now, eventhough I like the idea and great fun to start a race scene or simply have fun, in new areas - but it might evolve to something a bit more "hmm hmm" so to speak

Peter

PS: The boards that goes upwind the fastest, will usually win - even if not as fast downwind, as downwind is often a control issue and not a performance issue...

it's time for BoarderX to make a reappearance! Back in the day before racing took off, BoarderX was super exciting/fun for participants and spectators alike. It was gaining a lot of traction in NA thanks to the efforts of Neil Hutchinson, then died off when racing starting to get popular.

Format was 32 competitors max in heats of 4 competing on a course with banana float obstacles, sometimes stacked three high that riders had to jump over! If someone had a decent lead they'd always pull some big air trick at the end. Super fun.

I thought it was real good fun. Started kite surfing last year and entered a for fun event in Denmark. Was really cool, but got hooked and now I have to get a full directional race setup

Was competing on a sucky twintip but it was still a great experience racing against others on the course!

i think why not have two classes. but the tt class will always considered "for fun" that can include all riders.

certainly it wont infringe upon the more serious sailing minded class that is currently established.

there may be those who wish to get more serious about winning the tt class but most certainly you wont see it taken very seriously given what is already firmly established with kite racing today.

tautologies wrote:

lander wrote:
Yep. We also had a twintip class. But then people started showing up with these flyboards which made the competetion a bit unfair. So you got to have "box rule" in this class aswell...

lol, funny stuff. We had people custom make HUGE fins for the surfboard class. To me that is a bit silly...but hey who cares huh?

Maybe make the surfboard class strapless so that those who try to use gigantic fins will just get pulled off their boards?

Maybe the twin tip class would need a box rule too with limits on board size and length of fins.

I'm hoping for one design racing, but it doesn't look like it is going that way.

Yep i'd race a TT race if one turned up in town.

a down winder slalom through massive waves would be more fun and remove the "dude with the best upwind board" problem out of the window.