Typically, when a sport unfolds, it reveals itself in bits and spurts and the logical evolution of equipment follows the sequential experimentation by athletes or the other way around; yet, regardless of the order, the two often go hand in hand. Sometimes there’s a progression that is conspicuously missing from the picture, an aspect of the sport that’s not pursued, refined and perfected even when the equipment seems ready. In kiteboarding, the absence of kite-assisted foilsurfing has yet to be worked out.
Even with the advent of low aspect surf foils, pushed by kiteboarding and a growing prone foilsurfing industry, there are still very few, if no athletes that have made dropping into a wave by means of a kite and foil a subject of professional obsession. I’m not talking about carving open ocean swell or charging straight across the open face of a wave, but actively hitting the lip in the critical spot and trying to link sections on a performance-surfing caliber wave. Perhaps my blanket statement glazes over some outlier attempts, but the shining gold standard of surfing waves with a kite and foil has yet to be established. With that in mind, when the Core team descended on Mauritius to shoot the introduction of the Xlite foilboarding kite, it seemed like the perfect excuse to try our hand at tackling the kite-foilsurfing deficit… To read the rest of the article, become a subscriber of Tkb Magazine.
Tkb’s Vol. 16, No. 3 fall 2019 digital issue is available now. The print issue will be landing in mailboxes soon!
