If You Build It, They Will Come
Issue 59 / Thu 13th Oct, 2016
Sensi Graves looks at the rise of the Kite Park League and tracks the success story of one of the best kitesurfing movements on the planet right now!
Does kiteboarding really need another acronym? What’s the KPL? Isn’t there enough confusion already? To add to the alphabet soup that has dominated the kiteboarding lexicon over the past 18 months, I’d like to invite you to read the following piece on the introduction of a brand new acronym, KPL. You may not be the slightest bit familiar with slider riding, and you might have zero interest in ever hitting one. You may also question what possesses one to hit a static, hard object while attached to a kite in the first place, but in the interest of education, let me tell you a story. A story of the legitimacy that is, and family that makes up the Kite Park League.
2016 marked the inaugural season for the first ever park world tour, with riders from over 17 countries participating in five tour stops around the globe. After years in the pipelines, a legitimate world slider/kicker ranking and series of events has finally reared its ugly head and doesn’t look like it will be going away anytime soon.
Read on for insight into how it started, how our first year went and where we hope to take it.
How it started
The wakestyle movement and especially park riding have most certainly remained on the fringe of kiteboarding since its very inception as a discipline. Much like half-pipe riding in snowboarding and skateboarding, in the beginning, it’s taken a long time for the appeal of hitting hunks of plastic to gain attention. Few locations had slider parks; few individuals were motivated to build features, and few events were dedicated to this side of the sport.
2016 has marked a turning point for the sport as a flood of support has begun to back park kiteboarding. Three brand new sliders-only events popped up, more feet of plastic slider have been developed than any other year prior and more riders have descended on the parks than I’ve ever seen before.
This influx served as the perfect platform to launch the KPL. “We’ve been talking about the idea for years.” James Boulding told me “Billy Parker has been spreading the idea of a Triple Crown for a long time, but we were always like yeah, one day. It’s all happened really quickly. I’m pleased with how it came together. "
With the dedication and commitment of just a few individuals and with the support of our entire crew, the KPL launched. The KPL was officially formed post-completion of the first slider event of 2016, the brand new Blue Palawan Kiteboard Open. The brainchild of Filipina Paula Rosales, Blue Palawan launched the New Year with a bang with almost 30 participants showing up motivated to ride. January had opened with the first park event of the season, and a number of other slider events were already scheduled. The outlook for the year was positive and opportunity ripe to move full steam ahead.
Eric Rienstra is without a doubt the driving force behind the KPL. His passion and dedication to slider riding have never wavered, and he’s taken the bull by the horns. After the Palawan event, Eric along with the crew quickly decided this was the year to have a tour. He made a facebook group, added the 24 top park riders including driving forces such as Craig Cunningham, Tom Court and Sam Light and as a group we elected five representatives via popular vote.
Theses members were responsible for promoting and representing the interests of the group and included Sam Light, Colleen Carroll, Brandon Scheid, Eric Rienstra and Alexander Lewis-Hughes. Manuela Jungo soon had our website up, Tom Court started pumping out video projects and the KPL was off and running.
The next big hurdle was creating a scoring system that could be applied to any qualifying KPL event. Eric Rienstra and ex-PKRA judge Alexander Lewis-Hughes wrote the rules and formulated the system that we’d utilise at every event.
While doing it for the love of the sport seems crass, none of this would’ve happened without the riders stepping up and looking to bring opportunities for themselves, their peers and for the side of the sport they love. We couldn’t do it without the overall stoke of the group.
How did the year go?
Every single rider that I questioned answered this the same way, better than expected. Operating on a shoe-string budget and with almost half of the events occurring for the first time this year, every single participant had to pull together. It was with the support and commitment of the riders that made each event happen. Whether that was moving sliders into position during the Hood Jam. Or maintaining a good attitude while we huddled under kites waiting for a squall to pass during the Triple S.
“I made it to every event I could, regardless of whether I was going to be paid or not just because I really wanted to see this thing work out. The feedback and love I got from the whole crew convinced me that I had made the right choice.” - Alexander Lewis-Hughes.
The Blue Palawan Kiteboard Open launched the season. It takes commitment to buy $1500 plane tickets to the opposite side of the world and have faith that it will be worthwhile. It was precisely that commitment and trust in Paula that gathered the troops. Everyone wanted to support a brand new slider event. Palawan was light wind and competitors rode on big kites (I competed in the women’s kicker final on a 17m!). We were treated to three brand new obstacles for our sliding pleasure. After a 6-month hiatus from the previous slider event, Palawan got everyone amped up and stoked on riding with one another and pushing the sport.
Up next was the Triple S Invitational. In its 11th year, the Triple S has consistently attracted some of the biggest names in wakestyle and has done more for our side of the sport than anything else. What started out as a week filled with jam-session style riding and epic parties has turned into heat-style riding and a lot of money on the line. As the pressure has gone up so has the level of riding and this year was the highest I’ve ever seen.
During the women’s final, three front-side 540’s were thrown right in a row. And in the men’s heat, the guys were going massive, making for arguably the most exciting kicker heat we’ve experienced to date. Real Watersports is home to the largest slider park in the world, and the Triple S is the pinnacle of slider riding. The high level of riding this year was a true testament to how far slider riding has come.
Next came Hood Jam, an entirely grassroots event with Colleen Carroll spearheading organisation and support. Hood Jam has quickly become the go-to event of the season. I’ve never seen the slider park in Hood River as busy as it was this past summer. Brandon Scheid and Rich Sabo run the Slider Project, a non-profit that runs the slider park. This year, the Slider Project was able to fund, with the help of new sponsors and supporters two new features for the park.
The spirit of the Hood Jam is that we’re all there to push one another, promote slider riding and give an opportunity for everyone to showcase their skills. The Hood Jam is unique in that the riders collectively decide what they want to do. The build component of the event is especially fun as one day is dedicated to creating a home-made feature to increase the creativity of the park.
This year we built a corrugated tube on wooden legs that we stuck up against the end of the North cheese wedge. The small step-up gap in between the features and general riskiness of the set-up made this the most technical feature that we’ve had in a slider event to date. It was amazing to see every single one of the ladies charging it. The Hood Jam also brought out more trick variations and never before executed kicker hits than we’ve seen before. In the men’s kicker final more 720’s of all variations were stomped than I think in any other competition before.
The fourth stop was Rail Masters in Blagoveshchenskaya, Russia put on by Konstantin Bobovik. Although the top riders decided to use this event as one of their two discards, the Russians showed up to represent and put up and amazing level of riding. The Naoba2 Kite Park boast one of the largest parks in the world next to Real and Hood River and this year saw the introduction of an incline box to double pipe with a step down, the most technical feature on the tour. That said, the carnage was spectacular! IlyaIskhnopulo took the win with a solid all around performance followed by AleksandrMinov and Anton Uzhegov.
Finally, we wrapped up with the Rhosneigr Park Jam. This was another one that needed support, and I made the journey to the UK purely for that reason. Events aren’t going to be successful unless they have competitors and media. With two home-made features and a small pot of prize money, the Rhosneigr event had the least financial support on the tour.
I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the rail and the event overall. KPL champion Sam Light elaborates “Organizer Ben Todd built a really fun park and had a legit team of helpers braving the cold out there all day helping move the features. We were blessed with six days of good wind and we even had a few days of sunshine! This meant we could really do the event justice and make all that hard work building the park worthwhile. The international guys came prepared with a lot of neoprene, and there actually wasn’t much moaning about the temperature, it wasn’t that cold, I was wearing a 4/3 most of the time."
Sam continued "We have refined the format over the last few events, and we were able to complete the main event in one day and enjoy the other days of wind freeriding and compiling media. Then to finish off a fantastic week of kiting Toddy had gone a step further and bought a 2.0 cable system and set it up on a friend's private land. We spent the final weekend riding cable and partying!”
Now that we’ve finished (just) the final stop of the inaugural KPL season, we can look back at the season. As a collective, we’ve generated more media (print, online, photos and videos) than any other kite group out there. We’ve got more internationally sponsored riders on tour than any other acronym out there, and our momentum is just starting to build. Everything we do is done in a spirit of fun, support and awareness for slider riding.
As much positivity that we’ve had, it has certainly not been all bunnies and roses. Running a tour is challenging, and we’ve encountered many obstacles. Tensions ran high at multiple events. During one heat during the Hood Jam, despite being great friends, three of the riders almost came to blows. And despite having wind every day, conditions weren’t ideal, and we were questioning why we had wanted to have a contest in the first place.
In both Palawan and Rhosneigr, we dealt with the changing tide, adding another factor into achieving excellent conditions for riding. In almost every location, we were constantly adjusting the features to account for changing wind conditions and angles. Finally, we’ve yet to find a way for everything to run in the smoothest, most fun and fair way possible.
Despite these hurdles, and I can say this totally truthfully, we’ve had an awesome first season. Season highlights include a tonne of NBD’s (Never Been Done’s). Asia’s first kite park was installed. Christophe Tack landed the first heelside front 900 to be done off a static kicker in a contest. Brandon Scheid landed a mobe 7 and a blind pete 5 during the Hood Jam. He continues to be the only rider EVER to have landed those. And despite our previous best efforts, I think this was also the first year the men on tour really recognised the ladies as stepping it up and verbally acknowledged that. After Hood Jam, to hear them say how impressed they were with our riding felt awesome.
The future of the KPL is bright. We’ve shown that we don’t need a tonne of money to make legitimate events happen. We’ve shown that we’re willing and able to do what’s needed to promote kiteboarding in general. And we’ve shown that a dedicated group really can make a difference. As Colleen Carroll says “Already we’ve seen the number of riders attending events increase, the level of progression go through the roof and have also heard intent to build several new parks and features around the world. Many of the big brands are getting behind us too which will really help for future years, and I know several kite brands that have brought on new park riders to their teams.”
Many of the riders involved on the tour think that features are the future of kiteboarding and world level competition and whether you believe that or not, the ball as started to roll. By providing a world ranking for sliders, our goal is to promote the achievements of the riders involved as well as create better media value for all of the sponsors involved. Introducing kickers and sliders to the world stage will hopefully progress kiteboarding to the visibility level of our sister sports and appeal to an even broader audience.
In conclusion, we do need another acronym. Under-representation for slider riding has come to an end. The industry’s interest has been piqued, and we intend to keep the appetite sated.
Watch out; there might just be a slider park popping up somewhere near you.
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By Sensi Graves
