Indoor windsurfing

[Darbonne]

PWA indoor event going on now in Poland. I am not sure what to think about this. On one hand it does bring attention to the sport. I read that 35000 tickets have been sold. It looks to me that the potential for injury is great. Something just doesn't seem right to me. But then again I might just be an old fart that is behind the times.

[Bigwave65]

They have been doing indoor events for a while, I think its sorta common (or used to be)in Europe. I do believe years ago they used to have indoor events in the US.

[xander.arch]

PWA had a live feed of the jumping and freestyle contest that I watched this am. In my opinion it was beyond lame. They went through a lot of effort to promote the event and get it setup, but the fans only supply wind up to about 12 feet off the water so once a rider launches off the ramp they have no wind to work with. This meant pros like Ricardo Campello we're having a hard time rotating through forward loops. I don't know why nobody thought to add a row of fans higher up at least in the area of the jump. The ramp itself also seemed pretty poorly designed and the pool was just too small. Most of the freestylers ended up crashing into the edge trying to complete a move. Basically it seemed pretty half hearted. I think it made windsurfing look silly. They also had to keep stopping the fans to keep them from overheating which meant the riders had to spend a lot of time waiting for the wind which seemed pretty ironic to me.

[cgoudie1]

Maybe they just needed some fans to cool down their fans.

;*)

-Craig


p.s. This sport is a little silly in or outside of a pool

[Darbonne]

I watched some of it too. It did seem that many of the sailors were having trouble completing their tricks. I did not watch any of the racing though. Seems like the heat races may be more exciting to watch. I agree not enough wind and not enough space.