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Chris 249 said..Paducah said..Chris 249 said..
Paducah, in Oz I think the "casual" or "leisure" use of RBs stopped before they got into the Olympics; they were pretty much only a racing class. But the numbers were definitely smaller at the tail end of the IMCO era than they were before the IMCO was selected, and the numbers today are larger than they were when the IMCO was in the Games. The latter part of the era when the IMCO was in the Olympics was the low point for Raceboarding.
Even in Lasers, many people in the "Olympic age" group dropped out when the class became Olympic because they knew they would be uncompetitive against the full timers. The class is now overwhelmingly made up of juniors, youth and Masters.
The page in the WF1 proposal that shows the number of Starboard foiling boards out there is a bit of a worry, because while foiling is great, if that's the future and there's only 260 such boards in the entire world, then our sport really has become pretty tiny.
I wouldn't be worried abouit the Starboard numbers. That's just one brand in an otherwise open field. If you totalled the number of race oriented boards and included larger brands like Fanatic, JP and smaller ones like FMX, Patrik, RRD, Exocet, etc, the number will be comfortably bigger. Not to mention how many top level foilers are using existing Formula boards.
The positive aspect of an Olympic foil board is that it will be the first time in 15 years that we'll have an Olympic board that one might actually want to freeride and not be absurdly expensive.
Yes, but even if that "comfortably bigger" number is say 5 times what SB has sold AND there are twice as many people on existing boards, it's still not really a major sailing class, or a big Olympic sport.
I had expected there'd be more and some people in the industry are saying that there is very strong demand for foiling, but on the other hand when I spent about 10 days at Lake Garda this European summer, it was apparent that there were normally only about 4-8 foilers out most of the time when the breeze blew. The other thing that struck me was the age of the slalom boards that most people were sailing, so it seems as if most Euros are not upgrading their windsurfing kit very often.
I would still reckon that the sailing characteristics and the extremely high standard of sailing is going to keep many people out of the class; in other foiling sailing classes you see good sailors on top quality gear get lapped in a two-lap race, and that turns many of them off. On the plus side, we may be able to pick up ex-Olympic gear fairly cheaply which could be fun.
I've also spent some time at Lake Garda, this summer (just under three weeks, in total) and agree with you. There are always flocks of RS:X -- both men and women -- out on the lake and usually only a handful of guys out on foils -- and most of those guys don't look like they're training to race. The number of proper slalom set-ups dwarfs the foilers.
On the other hand, I also watched footage of a European foil racing event on lake Silvaplana, Switzerland, and that was well populated and looked like absolute magic from both a sailing and a windsurfing perspective.
Watching that race, you could clearly see the potential for foiling windsurfers. The course covered the whole lake and included upwind sailing -- obviously. There was less pumping than one sees in a typical RS:X race but still a fair amount. Actual course sailing tactics were required, not just a killer lay-down gybe and tungsten balls.
Which makes me think that if you build it, they will come.
Few people will SERIOUSLY invest in race-level foiling gear and foiling training while foiling is still considered a fringe of the windsurfing world and even more so of the competitive windsurfing world. Those who have the motivation to do so probably already spend their time training for slalom or RS:X as their primary disciplines. For the average punter, foiling gear is EXPENSIVE and FRAGILE, the second-hand market is only just beginning to be established, and so they have no incentive to buy in to the competitive level -- it's not like the Laser class where someone can get an old boat for a crate of beer. (Sure, that will be soggy and soft and won't be competitive but it will put them in the fleet, along with those who ARE competitive, and that's the all-important first rung of the ladder.)
I, myself, look forward to the day when I'm sailing in those fleets. And I'm a punter -- I've been surfing for two sparse European seasons, can't carve through my gybes and have only just learned to water-start, this year. But I can see the future on the horizon and I know two things for certain: foiling is going to be a reality and I learn quickly.
I've stood on a board on less than 30 days, total, and I'm already one of the quickest across the water on my local lake (I think it's my stance!), quickest onto the plane when a gust (finally) hits, one of the quickest to tack, and at least planing into and surviving my gybes even if I'm not planing out of them, yet. I'm going back to Cape Town, hopefully soon, and will be back for the European summer, next year. I'll learn to gybe through sheer hard-headed stubbornness. Then I'll learn to foil. I've raced Lasers for years and so I already know a fair amount of the rest. Perhaps it takes me two more years to get race-ready. Perhaps five or ten, it doesn't matter -- the future is coming. (I won't ever be competitive but that's no problem: fighting someone for second-last is as much fun as fighting someone for first -- it's the fighting that counts.)
If anything should herald the coming of a foiling future, it should be the European love of them as evidenced at Silvaplana. There's a lot of inland water in Europe and a lot of it doesn't get 20kts more than twice a season and, then, it's probably snowing, cold-and-raining, or otherwise miserable. But a LOT of it gets at least 10kts thermal wind whenever the sun shines! Lowering the wind range (I think I heard a PWA sailor say they were aiming to race in 5, during a broadcast from Japan, this season. That's BONKERS!) would make windsurfing viable again. Foils make it cool and, unlike something like a moth, foiling windsurfing kit is relatively robust, accessible, usable and cheap. And transportable in a VW Caddy.
We'll never relive the 70s and 80s but racing on foils could bring about a Renaissance for windsurfing amongst us mere mortals who'll never be professionals, never be sponsored and never get to spend our lives travelling for wind. Races like those I saw on Silvaplana might spread to other foil-suitable inland waters -- most of which are already covered in displacement-mode dinghies proceeding sleepily around buoys whenever the weather isn't too awful -- and that would be magic.
Putting foiling windsurfers in the Olympics would increase the likelihood of that becoming a reality!
cammd
> 9 months ago, 13 May 2019
