The PWA are possibly going to separate fin racing from foil racing. And they may bring in beach starts and obstacles like the old Super X.
Fin events would be restricted to windy locations.


www.surf-magazin.de/windsurfen/szene-und-events/pwa-world-cup-finne-und-foil-2024-wieder-getrennt-finnen-slalom-mit-beachstart-und-hindernissen/?fbclid=IwAR2jl2_GeIWN0OE7aSOmfVwXN66Yg8ZSMzrdIa74wpDKKCIzJxa2MlBWT-4

About time! Go the fins

Guess they feel the need to address the fact that fins are not competitive against foils

Would be cool if the difference would allow more locations (thinking actually seeing pwa closer to home...)

Then I could be just like the people here at 6:25

Ha, that would be amazing but I only believe it when I see it! With so much influence from the riders, it will probably just stay slalom as we know it today.

If this goes ahead though, would be rather interesting to see what gear will be used. Guess pure slalom boards and cambered rigs aren't gonna cut it.

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aeroegnr said..
Then I could be just like the people here at 6:25

Awesome. But were those super x jumps ever a really good idea? Seems like alot of racers there might not have thought so.
Think i'd retire forever after just one of those hits.
Maybe they could just make a wall they have to smash through instead.

I thought the Super-X thing was pretty rubbish. Jumps over a sausage ballon are easy if you get a ramp, harder if you dont. It relies too much on luck.
The brands will have to have registered all the kit to use by now. Imagine having to use proper slalom kit for Super-X with freestyle tricks thrown in as well?

It all results in improvements in equipment. We all benefit.

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segler said..
It all results in improvements in equipment. We all benefit.

A few years ago I was talking to a former PWA world champ who said the opposite. He said that the rules requiring the PWA guys to use production gear, and the sales lift that came from PWA wins, meant that production gear was being distorted to suit the PWA scoring system (which only scored a few waves per heat) and the expertise of the PWA sailors. The result was boards that were designed to do moves the typical good sailor can't make, and which were very slow (because the pros didn't need to make many waves) which meant the typical good sailor missed a lot of potentially fun waves.

Eons ago when I was doing slalom against the pros, the same applied in a different way; the boards and rigs were being designed around people who could do outstanding high-speed gybes without slowing down significantly, pumped hard, never decelerated, and who could handle very big sails with ease. The non-pros sail significantly slower and use much smaller sails and therefore what works for them is very different.

We see something similar in many one design classes across all forms of sailing. In classes like Lasers where everyone uses the same gear, the top sailors use different rig tune to achieve different shapes (normally flatter upwind and fuller downwind in general) that the typical good sailor cannot perform with, because they are not as good at keeping the boat in the groove. On big boats, the pro sail trimmers often change rig settings significantly when the pro driver steps aside to let the owner steer.

So the gear that is best for pros is often very different to the gear that is best for the typical good sailor. We often don't benefit from the developments made for winning pro events.

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Chris 249 said..

segler said..
It all results in improvements in equipment. We all benefit.

A few years ago I was talking to a former PWA world champ who said the opposite. He said that the rules requiring the PWA guys to use production gear, and the sales lift that came from PWA wins, meant that production gear was being distorted to suit the PWA scoring system (which only scored a few waves per heat) and the expertise of the PWA sailors. The result was boards that were designed to do moves the typical good sailor can't make, and which were very slow (because the pros didn't need to make many waves) which meant the typical good sailor missed a lot of potentially fun waves.

Eons ago when I was doing slalom against the pros, the same applied in a different way; the boards and rigs were being designed around people who could do outstanding high-speed gybes without slowing down significantly, pumped hard, never decelerated, and who could handle very big sails with ease. The non-pros sail significantly slower and use much smaller sails and therefore what works for them is very different.

We see something similar in many one design classes across all forms of sailing. In classes like Lasers where everyone uses the same gear, the top sailors use different rig tune to achieve different shapes (normally flatter upwind and fuller downwind in general) that the typical good sailor cannot perform with, because they are not as good at keeping the boat in the groove. On big boats, the pro sail trimmers often change rig settings significantly when the pro driver steps aside to let the owner steer.

So the gear that is best for pros is often very different to the gear that is best for the typical good sailor. We often don't benefit from the developments made for winning pro events.

Spot one Chris, very few of us mortals can sail big boards ,big sails fully lit and survive.

The combination of the requirement to use serial equipment and limiting the number of boards/sails that can be used in PWA racing has undoubtedly contributed to the development of gear that is generally available, less specialized, and therefore by definition more accessible. Of course, racing gear is for racing, so not necessarily for everyone, but developments in racing spill over to rest of the range.

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Chris 249 said..

segler said..
It all results in improvements in equipment. We all benefit.

A few years ago I was talking to a former PWA world champ who said the opposite. He said that the rules requiring the PWA guys to use production gear, and the sales lift that came from PWA wins, meant that production gear was being distorted to suit the PWA scoring system (which only scored a few waves per heat) and the expertise of the PWA sailors. The result was boards that were designed to do moves the typical good sailor can't make, and which were very slow (because the pros didn't need to make many waves) which meant the typical good sailor missed a lot of potentially fun waves.

Eons ago when I was doing slalom against the pros, the same applied in a different way; the boards and rigs were being designed around people who could do outstanding high-speed gybes without slowing down significantly, pumped hard, never decelerated, and who could handle very big sails with ease. The non-pros sail significantly slower and use much smaller sails and therefore what works for them is very different.

We see something similar in many one design classes across all forms of sailing. In classes like Lasers where everyone uses the same gear, the top sailors use different rig tune to achieve different shapes (normally flatter upwind and fuller downwind in general) that the typical good sailor cannot perform with, because they are not as good at keeping the boat in the groove. On big boats, the pro sail trimmers often change rig settings significantly when the pro driver steps aside to let the owner steer.

So the gear that is best for pros is often very different to the gear that is best for the typical good sailor. We often don't benefit from the developments made for winning pro events.

I know a few mere mortals who use full on slalom kit and have a great time speed sailing at my local spot. Its not the easiest place to go fast, but they hit over 30 knots for 10s average on a regular basis. The modern kit enables them to sail the gusty conditions better. They arent interested in gybing, so arent so bothered about that. Both went to West Kirby and nearly cracked 40 knots.

I'm more interested in all round ease of use and longevity of kit, so buy Ezzy Lions. If I wanted something faster, I'd be looking at Severne Moto, P7 AC-Z (2 cam) or similar. They would need to make them out of x-ply though. These sails benefit from lessons learnt from full on slalom sails, but are user friendly. You do get people buying the wrong kit for their skills, then you get 'Why dont my cammed sails rotate, do I need to add outhaul' type threads on here and FB.

I'll chime in a little bit...
I had the money at the time to buy a one design (iqfoil) when I was pretty much higher beginner/low intermediate but able to ride a foil stably. It was a little more complicated to set up as my first set of race gear, but increased by time on the water substantially. This is primarily because the capability of the 9.0 with a foil.

It took me a little bit to recognize when the wind was stronger but within my capability, and it took time to recognize how to set up the kit better, but the benefit of the one design was there were so many people on the exact same kit that I could get advice and tips where the only difference is trim and the rider.

It is a bit more fragile than more freeride stuff, but replacements have been able to find used. And, I was also able to expand the capability with the same base board/foil setup and other, cheaper sails. I find the sails and supporting masts to be the most expensive expendable piece of the equation, as Hyperglides and their SDM masts are around $2k usd new for a matching set. I opted for cheaper more freeride/freerace sails, the Foil Glides, which rig well enough on non-brand RDMs that they expand my higher wind options on the same board/foil set, albeit with a shorter fuse and front wing.

In the beginning a lot of my struggles with foiling were nonmatching equipment, and having to trim the foil when it wasn't clear where it was on that board/foil pairing. Mine wasn't particularly bad so I did eventually figure it out, but I've seen and heard some stories where the particular board/foil are very mismatched and a novice just couldn't figure it out.

But, now I have a highly capable race kit that I know how to use at an amateur level, and can sign up for races when I can and they are nearby, and has incredible bottom end, which I need the most for the light winds here.

I'd love to try slalom fin kit, but I can't seem to justify the expense with my skill level. I am close but still cannot do a proper planing fin jibe all the way through. A lot of this is just due to conditions not always being there, which limits my TOW to practice them. Foiling and the range, especially in very gusty conditions and ability to stay flying, made fully flying jibes, or jibes with foiling speed at least maintained, achievable for me.

There are a handful of people here with full slalom kit, and they are fast sailors that make a lot of their fin jibes. Maybe by the time I've eaten up my cheetahs and bigger freeride stuff I'll get either lions or motos for fin and see how it improves things, but I doubt I'll get to the point where I go full slalom.

The tech in the race gear, even the now older, "out of date" IQFoil, is incredible though for seeing how much capability is in a 4 cammed sail with adjustable outhaul, and a little bit more knowledge of how to tweak the downhaul to get even more range. It's helped me identify problems with my smaller freeride gear, because just a smidge of outhaul can greatly change the behavior of an out of shape rig going upwind/downwind on a race foil. Now I usually can hold a sail and think "feels like outhaul is loose" or "feels like the top isn't releasing and I need to add more downhaul". It's unclear if I would have gotten there as fast without at least an adjustable outhaul on my other gear, which I sometimes use on the bigger stuff (6.0+).

On FB Taty says they should leave slalom as it is for 2-3 years.
I havent seen any other PWS racers comment yet.
I guess if the numbers drop off they can do something about it then.
Imagine 8 sailors doing 30+ knots then a jump over a barrier and the 1st sailor crashes. When are those following supposed to do? Jump over the barrier and sailor & kit in the water?
Good luck with doing beach starts at Pozo as well, or Sotavento in the wind shadow as its x-off winds.

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Chris 249 said..
.. the rules requiring the PWA guys to use production gear, and the sales lift that came from PWA wins, meant that production gear was being distorted to suit the PWA scoring system (which only scored a few waves per heat) and the expertise of the PWA sailors. The result was boards that were designed to do moves the typical good sailor can't make, and which were very slow (because the pros didn't need to make many waves) which meant the typical good sailor missed a lot of potentially fun waves.

I can't talk about wave gear, but I think this is true for slalom gear. I can sail production slalom boards, but I have also been in a few races with PWA slalom guys, who always were on much larger gear that I would have had no chance of controlling, despite similar body size. The borrowed board that I finally managed to get 40 knots on was a very different beast from the slalom boards I own: much easier to sail and control on all conditions that I used it in, from 15 to 30+ knots of wind. The board (a Chris Lockwood-designed Mistral Speed 95) was significantly longer and narrow than similar-sized slalom boards, and made a one-board quiver possible for three months of flatwater speed sailing in Oz. But then, it was designed specifically for speed sailing with reasonably-size sails by normal sailors, not for blasting through chop on oversized gear by top-level athletes.

I can think about a few other similar examples of race gear. That includes sails that I thought rotated quite badly, but which the main tester and top sailor of the brand called "rotating perfectly fine"; and race booms that were so big that my lower arms cramped up within minutes, even when I was fit enough to sail a couple of hundred kilometers a day in some chop.

There definitely is some trickle-down in the developments made for PWA sailors to the gear regular sailors use. But there are certainly also some gear trends that are too extreme for most sailors. And perhaps we'd be using things like carbon masts now even if the search for an advantage in racing had not been the reason to develop them.

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PWA Announces New Slalom Formats for 2024

Slalom X

The PWA is excited to announce a new evolution in Slalom for 2024. Slalom X! The divergence of fin and foil has grown to a point where they have both earned their own roles in our amazing and diverse sport, so for 2024, There will be 2 separate disciplines. Foil Slalom and Slalom X. Foil Slalom will continue to offer the purest form of racing, driving innovation and technological advancement at the cutting edge of competition, ensuring action across the widest wind range. Foil Slalom embodies the most intense battles, biggest risks and biggest rewards for the highest performing athletes in windsurf racing and will take place at all PWA slalom events. Slalom X will liberate the discipline from its hi tech partnership with foil, and see the rebirth of fin slalom. Like the World Rally Championship, to Formula 1 in motor sport, Slalom X will bring a different dimension to racing, testing athletes to the max. Reserved only for high wind destinations, such as Gran Canaria or Fuerteventura, a new spectrum of features become available, generating possibilities not seen before in slalom, and putting the action into overdrive. The end result will be the biggest test of all-round ability on the race course, creating a spectacle that cannot be ignored. For further details please see the Slalom X presentation HERE

files.pwaworldtour.com/PWA_Slalom_X_2024.pdf

To be fair I think they have nailed it.

www.seabreeze.com.au/forums/Windsurfing/General/Fins-and-Foils-are-getting-a-divorce#2857721:~:text=files.pwaworldtour.com/PWA_Slalom_X_2024.pdf

Beach Start
Beach Finish
Obstacle Jump
Speed Leg
Surf Slalom
Chicane
Full Fleet
Half Fleet
Long Distance

1 in 4 races to be traditional fin slalom.

the only one i'm not sure about is the obstacle jump, but the rest of it sounds great.

Hope they make the gybe marks inside the breakers

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windsurftom said..
To be fair I think they have nailed it.

www.seabreeze.com.au/forums/Windsurfing/General/Fins-and-Foils-are-getting-a-divorce#2857721:~:text=files.pwaworldtour.com/PWA_Slalom_X_2024.pdf

Beach Start
Beach Finish
Obstacle Jump
Speed Leg
Surf Slalom
Chicane
Full Fleet
Half Fleet
Long Distance

1 in 4 races to be traditional fin slalom.

the only one i'm not sure about is the obstacle jump, but the rest of it sounds great.

Hope they make the gybe marks inside the breakers

Should be a lot more interesting for spectators, very exciting!

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windsurftom said..
To be fair I think they nailed it

Nailed what, their own coffin shut?

They are going to have a "world championships" with only one or two events. Also a return to whining about wind minimums and how they are measured. This is a change that the general public will not understand being done to appease the dinosaurs.

Who wants to tell the PWA marketing department that someone recently took a huge dump on the whole "X" thing? If they don't know, maybe someone who has a Twitter account can ... oh, never mind.

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windsurftom said..

There isnt anything in the rules to have stopped them running slalom there in the subsequent 35 years. I'd love to see it.
The thing which has stopped them is money and reliable conditions. How many float and ride Aloha Classic wave events have we seen?
They would have to run it in summer when the wind is more reliable, but the waves smaller. I think its all down to money.

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Paducah said..
Who wants to tell the PWA marketing department that someone recently took a huge dump on the whole "X" thing? If they don't know, maybe someone who has a Twitter account can ... oh, never mind.

Thats how I see it, marketing, something new to try to attract more sponsorship. They need to try and do something to get new events, but is this it?

The current reliable locations in use, Pozo & Sotavento, dont have conditions suitable for beach starts/finishes.
Nor surf slalom really. Sotavento the bouys are as close to the beach as they can get without a wind shadow. At Pozo if you have the last couple of legs in the waves, where does the finish go? It would have to be on the outside. There isnt anything currently to stop them doing that.
The obstacle jump looks like an accident waiting to happen. If they do run the jump, then only 1 in 4 races can be traditional format. Its a bit odd having that in writing, as it isnt flexible.
Will full fleet long distance races be more exciting then regular slalom?
I predict that none of this new optional stuff will actually happen.

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PhilUK said..

Paducah said..
Who wants to tell the PWA marketing department that someone recently took a huge dump on the whole "X" thing? If they don't know, maybe someone who has a Twitter account can ... oh, never mind.

Thats how I see it, marketing, something new to try to attract more sponsorship. They need to try and do something to get new events, but is this it?

The current reliable locations in use, Pozo & Sotavento, dont have conditions suitable for beach starts/finishes.
Nor surf slalom really. Sotavento the bouys are as close to the beach as they can get without a wind shadow. At Pozo if you have the last couple of legs in the waves, where does the finish go? It would have to be on the outside. There isnt anything currently to stop them doing that.
The obstacle jump looks like an accident waiting to happen. If they do run the jump, then only 1 in 4 races can be traditional format. Its a bit odd having that in writing, as it isnt flexible.
Will full fleet long distance races be more exciting then regular slalom?
I predict that none of this new optional stuff will actually happen.

Sorry, mine was just a silly comment about them using the "X" thing. Somebody else did that with a very well known brand while they were flushing it down the sewer pipes. Of course it's marketing. That's what pro sports is about at the end of the day. Not that I disagree with your individual points - I'm not well enough informed to offer a constructive opinion on the matter other than it would be fun to watch as a spectacle - windsurfing's Roman Colosseum.

I don't know how they are going to make it work but if they do, they could be onto something.

As a spectator, in the 80's, it was quite spectacular to watch the slalom in the waves!

?si=Psqibub0aQyQZwoH

The one BIG difference from the past from a marketing view is the " drone footage"

I don't know if it is from costs or uncertainty or lack of sales... but there have been a lot of changes in sponsorship...

Duotone dropping heaps of riders
CHS & FMX dropping Maciek

It will be interesting to see where people pop up!

I think its rubbish and was only done to protect the old guys from getting surpassed by the younger quicker guys on foils. Time will tell if any of the above stuff listed actually happens, but i predict there will be a lot of cancelled heats because someone couldnt plane out of a gybe like back in the days before foils.

One of my favourite events is run here in WA by the LT sailors and its a 4 day event of all different race courses. The choice is then up to the individual as to what gear they run. After 4 days it shows who is the best overall sailor which is what PWA should be in my opinion. Obviously there was enough people complaining that the fins were getting spanked to cause the PWA to change the format so we will just have to see how it turns out.

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Cuchufleta said..
I don't know how they are going to make it work but if they do, they could be onto something.

As a spectator, in the 80's, it was quite spectacular to watch the slalom in the waves!

?si=Psqibub0aQyQZwoH

As a sailor in the '80s, it was fantastic fun to race the slalom in the waves! Flat water slalom is fine, but not the same.

Can't wait to see how the fin format evolves. It's not super x it's full power slalom racing on slalom kit with waves and jumps mixed in

I love the idea of this new format to go alongside foil racing.
The kauli vs AA super-x race back in 03? Was some of the best racing ever. The Spock's were kind of stupid though.
This new format brings all that back without the dumb tricks mid race.

And just think how much more relevant the production gear they use will be for regular guys.
Id buy a slalom board that's also made to beach start in waves and jump a buoy.