Interesting that the correlation between skill level and injuries are very different for the two.

Interesting that most windsurfing injuries occur during technical manoeuvres. Does this include avoiding kiters?

Logically makes sense to me and I would consider myself to have been fairly profecient at both sports..

Im more concerned why their maths on the percentages doesn't add to 100% ??

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jontyh said..
Interesting that most windsurfing injuries occur during technical manoeuvres. Does this include avoiding kiters?

...or being hit by a jet ski?

1:19 Interesting that a lot of kite injuries occurred on the beach. I thought it was a water sport A good name for the maneuver would be 'sandplowing'

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cald said..
Logically makes sense to me and I would consider myself to have been fairly profecient at both sports..

Im more concerned why their maths on the percentages doesn't add to 100% ??

I wondered the same, so found the paper.

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5155257/

Turns out not all of the injured ones completed the questionnaire.

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f2f2f2 said..
I wondered the same, so found the paper.

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5155257/

Turns out not all of the injured ones completed the questionnaire.

Interesting paper. One big difference is that the injury rate for kite beginners was a lot higher than for windsurfers. That may be partly because the area was the North Sea, where you won't find many windsurf beginners or intermediates on the water. The reported rate of about 5 injuries per 1000 hours TOW seems quite high, but they only interviewed those who got injured.

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jontyh said..
Interesting that most windsurfing injuries occur during technical manoeuvres. Does this include avoiding kiters?

Bit of misleading video, with an obviously massive selection bias at its core. With windsurfing it is very difficult to get injured unless one is doing quite advanced freestyle moves, or radical wave riding. Something the vast majority of windsurfers never does. Take those activities out of the picture, and the injury rate is almost non existent. With Kiting people have died on the beach dragged by their kites.

Anyway, I actually went and read the original study www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5155257/ and the result is that even for the wave spot chosen for the study kiting has a significantly higher injury rate than windsurfing. See discussion "The results suggest that kitesurfing has a significantly higher injury rate than windsurfing. "

And it is only for people who went to the ER, so who knows, some people handle injuries better than others, including cuts and knee injuries. Guessing healthcare is free there, that may have an impact too, get injured and see a nurse!

Personally I stretched my MCLs on both knees windsurfing, due to them being weakened by the breast stroke, and other than a couple of bruises from hitting the mast that is it. Talked to a kiter a while ago, he was telling about all his injuries that sent him to the ER, he said he was still paying for the last one. In the US even if you are insured an ER visit can run from 20k to over 100k US!, just depends how good your insurance is.

Is there even a question?
HUNDREDS of kiteboarders have died from hitting land, and less than a handful of windsurfers have died from any solid object.

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LeeD said..
Is there even a question?
HUNDREDS of kiteboarders have died from hitting land, and less than a handful of windsurfers have died from any solid object.

Agree

Interesting article. However, the original article acknowledges:
"only athletes who presented at our hospital were included. It might be conceivable that these windsurfers and kitesurfers are more prone to
injuries than others. The total amount of windsurfers and kitesurfers is unknown. These factors might result in injury rates that are reported higher than they actually are."
It also means that the breakdown of the statistics in terms of expertise is also flawed.
These issues could have been resolved by doing a survey of kiters and windsurfers on the beach in terms of expertise and injuries. The only windsurfer injuries I have personally heard of were by "expert" windsurfers doing high jumps or extreme tricks. In contrast the recent kiting injuries I have heard of were generally by beginners.

But windsurfing has a higher death rate whilst doing the past time than kiting.
As does lawn bowls.

I agree with some others above "Is this even a question"?
Would be pretty hard to hurt yourself on a sailing board.

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Frodo said..
Interesting article. However, the original article acknowledges:
"only athletes who presented at our hospital were included. It might be conceivable that these windsurfers and kitesurfers are more prone to
injuries than others. The total amount of windsurfers and kitesurfers is unknown. These factors might result in injury rates that are reported higher than they actually are."

Check out the original article. All the numbers are there, they are very small and the study is based on self-reported questionnaire. The video actually does not report the main result of this little study: even in that one wave riding spot kiting has higher injury rates than windsurfing.

Screw the article.
History from 1999 thru 2017 shows over 200 deaths from kiters dragged onto a solid object.
And fully 1/4th were experts.

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Frodo said..
Interesting article. However, the original article acknowledges:
"only athletes who presented at our hospital were included. It might be conceivable that these windsurfers and kitesurfers are more prone to
injuries than others. The total amount of windsurfers and kitesurfers is unknown. These factors might result in injury rates that are reported higher than they actually are."
It also means that the breakdown of the statistics in terms of expertise is also flawed.
These issues could have been resolved by doing a survey of kiters and windsurfers on the beach in terms of expertise and injuries. The only windsurfer injuries I have personally heard of were by "expert" windsurfers doing high jumps or extreme tricks. In contrast the recent kiting injuries I have heard of were generally by beginners.

Most of my injuries are from being thrown on the boom catapulting..rib injuries.

Hundreds of kiters launched 12' into the air at 25 mph hitting solid objects.

Agree Lee, when windsurfing you can put your self on crutches, when kiting you can put yourself in the morgue

You can put yourself on crutches playing soccer.
But you won't run into a concrete wall at 25 mph.

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sboardcrazy said..
Most of my injuries are from being thrown on the boom catapulting..rib injuries.

Learn to jump with/into the catapult. Rarely will you get injured, nor will your mast damage the board.
I'm a regular crash test dummy n rarely get hurt.

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olskool said..
Learn to jump with/into the catapult. Rarely will you get injured, nor will your mast damage the board.
I'm a regular crash test dummy n rarely get hurt.

OK if you have super fast reflexes, above 30kts you're under water before you have time to think.

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decrepit said..

olskool said..
Learn to jump with/into the catapult. Rarely will you get injured, nor will your mast damage the board.
I'm a regular crash test dummy n rarely get hurt.

OK if you have super fast reflexes, above 30kts you're under water before you have time to think.

+1, sometimes it happens VERY quickly

Various kite forums have a special "accident and injury" section. Reading through some can be quite scary. I read somewhere they were having a competition jumping over windsurfers for fun which went wrong. Also searching for images of "kite injuries" or similar can give some scary results.