Submissions for the ISAF mid-year meeting: a first analysis

by International Kite Boarding Association

A first look at all the submissions made for a full slate of 10 events for the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro discloses some interesting developments.

Three main topics seem to be on the agenda for council to decide beginning of May in St. Petersburg. These are:

- keelboats for both men and women
- two medals for the 470s
- the question of boards - the one or the other, or both, or even more ?

While the 470 lobby obviously was on fire, with 19 out of the 35 submissions made regarding Olympic events and equipment now including 2 events for separate mens and womens medals in the 2 person dinghy with spinnaker, the keelboat lobby lost a bit ground as many submissions do not include any keelboats anymore at all.

Of course there are several submissions to re-instate the mens keelboat, however there doesn't seem to be a clear target against which the keelboat lobby can team up against.

The question for the boards still remains unclear. There seems to be a huge move towards having evaluation including both kiteboards and windsurfers which could also mean combined events - either as team event or as a relay event including teams of two (either a male and a female competitor, or a kiteboarder and a windsurfer of same gender in one team).

11 submissions have changed the "or" to "and/or", further 5 submissions include a clear team event option (which ensures that both kiteboarders and windsurfers will be present in Rio), and another 5 submissions ask for 3 or even 4 medals for boards. That sums up to an impressive 21 submissions out of the 35 that clearly want to give kiteboarding the chance to make it into the Olympics.

It has to be said that there are also 5 submissions that only want to see windsurfing and not kiteboarding in, and 2 submissions that do not want to see any boards in at all. We wonder if the initiators of these 7 submissions have already arrived in the 21st century and even thought about what the youth of the world wants to see.

Going further into the analysis of the submissions it becomes clear, that there is a huge crossover between those that want to see two 470 medals and those that want to see separate medals for kiteboarding and windsurfing. It could make sense to achieve both...

International Kite Boarding Association