Archive for March, 2009

With mountain boarding one of the fastest growing extreme sports, is was only a matter of time, before the board was teamed up with the kite as so eloquently shown here by Davelea360.

If you already kitesurf, making the transition to kite-mountainboarding is quite simple. A power kite can provide the energy to ride in parks, beaches, cross-country, or on a dry lake bed.

Remember that a mountain board is little more than an off road skate board with pneumatic tires, foot straps, and adjustable suspension for better ride and handling performance.

MBS Pro 100 Mountainboard with noSno soft bindings

When kitesurfing you are using the power of the kite to keep you on top of the water. Water creates a drag on the board so more power, and therefore a bigger kite, is needed.

However, with kiteboarding you are supported by a hard surface, whether it be sand or grass, therefore less friction, and so getting going is much easier. This means that you will need a kite which is one size (or maybe two sizes) smaller.

Andy Wardley, pictured above, was one of the pioneers of kite landboarding He was among the first people to ride a mountain board under kite power back at the end of the last century (!) – 1999.

You change the tyre pressure depending on the surface you will be kiteboarding on: softer for sand, harder for grass. Softer tyres are also more forgiving on your body when riding on rougher terrain.

Here are some useful kiteboarding safety tips that should be thought about and remembered:

• Have fun and stay safe while riding by making sure to wear a helmet, gloves, elbow pads, knee pads, long pants and long sleeves while kite mountainboarding.
• If you wear your board-rider retention leash while riding; make certain it is fastened snugly above your lead leg’s knee pad to reduce the potential of knee injury from twisting your leg.
• Use caution at all times. Kite within your limits and stay away from picnic areas, or populated parks.
• Always scout (survey) your terrain prior to attempting to ride it. Watch out for hidden obstacles and unseen dangers. Point out hidden dangers to others.
• Always be aware of and respect all automobiles, cyclists and pedestrians. Be mindful of others especially moving cars.
• Use a lower tire pressure to slow your speed if just starting.
• Practice stopping techniques frequently by bringing the kite overhead slowly, or slightly past, to resist your forward movement.
• Recognize the distance required for these stops. Always practice your stopping technique even after you feel you know it.
• When riding with others – always yield to the other rider. If both riders yield, problems will be avoided.
• Observe and obey all posted signs. Only ride where permission is granted.
• Always respect your environment, tread lightly to preserve nature.
• Do not litter the parks with garbage.

My son, who is my fount of knowledge on many extreme sports, is saving up to buy an MBS mountain board – something to pack alongside the kite board, snow board, windsurfers, skis, skateboard, blades and the prosaic old tennis rackets!

Time to check this sport out more closely I think… and if you took the time to watch the video from switchfakie above you’ll have an idea of what we are about to let ourselves in for. Before we know it he’ll be dragging us up to the mountains to have a ‘real’ challenge – completely ignoring the fact that you can mountainboard anywhere with a 5 degree slope!

A 5 degree slope will give you enough speed to carve – but will this be good enough for him? Hell no.

If you are a beginner at mountainboarding then a grassy hill is the best place to start. Alternatively you can use BMX tracks, dirt roads and pavements. Actually, you can ride your mountainboard virtually anywhere you want.

A mountainboard is part snowboard and part skateboard. It has a snowboard-like deck, adjustable turning system, air-filled knobby tires and an open-heel binding system. Some mountainboards can be outfitted with a hand-held V brake – all MBS boards have this facility.

They were initially invented to help snowboarders cross-train during the dry summer months.

Since then mountainboarding has developed into a sport in it’s own right with it’s own culture and history and includes racing, freestyle, freeride and kiting disciplines. Mountainboarding is done in over 30 countries and continues to be one of the most exciting and fastest growing extreme board sports.

Essentially it is a combination of snowboarding, skateboarding and surfing, but done on grass, dirt or pavement. You initiate turns by applying pressure on your toes or heels.

It’s not difficult to learn. If you’ve got good balance, it’s pretty easy. In fact it is much easier to learn than snowboarding. Within one hour most people can learn how to carve in both directions and in total control.

Protective gear is recommended – helmet, elbow pads, wrist guards, leather gloves, long pants, knee pads, sturdy shoes, eye protection. The safer you feel the better you will ride and when you do take the eventual tumble you’ll won’t mind getting right back up and carrying on.

And this is the sort of thing that is bound to happen to you whilst learning to mountainboard… as kindly portrayed by adztec77!

However, with a bit more practice you’ll be able to emulate mtbord510 and board like this:

After the tragic news last week from Mont Tremblant ski resort we have been looking out for news on the reactions to whether it should become mandatory to wear protective head gear whilst skiing or snowboarding. It seems as though the Canadians are going to be the first to introduce an industry standard helmet which can be certified but they are not at the moment going so far as to make legislation to say the wearing of helmets is mandatory.

So we laud the testing and certification and further suggest that it should not be a mandatory to wear a helmet – which again appears to be the direction the Canadian authorities are moving. Yes we suggest you wear them, yes we like what we are hearing about industry standards and certification but no we do not believe in taking away an individuals choice. We do not like the idea of being so wrapped up in cotton wool that an individuals ability to choose what he or she does is stripped from that individual. Such legislation would take us nearer to becoming automatons.

We have picked up this article from the Canadian Press for which thanks and present a video below which clearly demonstrates the case for wearing a helmet. Well done canada for taking a lead and we hope to see the US and Europe following suit.

‘Wearing a helmet while skiing or snowboarding can reduce the risk of a head injury by 60 per cent. But not all helmets are created equal, says the Canadian Standards Association, which is introducing certification testing under a new standard.

The CSA developed a new standard for alpine skiing and snowboarding helmets last June and will begin providing testing for certification of the protective head gear next month, said John Walter, vice-president of standards for the non-profit organization.

“This is the first such standard in Canada … specifically developed to meet the needs of Canadians by Canadians,” Walter said Monday. “These helmets are meant to sustain multiple impacts, where a number of helmets that are manufactured are only supposed to (take) one severe fall and they should be thrown out and another one purchased.”

The CSA is to formally announce its certification testing Tuesday, less than a week after actress Natasha Richardson died from a brain injury she sustained from a fall while at Quebec’s Mont-Tremblant ski resort. She was not wearing a helmet.

Walter said the announcement had been planned for about two months, but he acknowledged that Richardson’s tragic death has made the issue of protection from head trauma even more timely.

“You hear people say, ‘I wouldn’t have worn a helmet before, but I will now.’ So obviously that kind of attention will help people be aware that they need to wear a helmet.”

While the CSA committee that developed the manufacturing guidelines considers them superior to U.S. and European standards for snow sport helmets, manufacturers have no obligation to meet the requirements or submit their products for certification.

“This could be adopted by Health Canada, perhaps, as part of the Hazardous Products Act or consumer products legislation … it could be adopted by any of the provinces,” said Walter, who is urging government to adopt the standard and make testing mandatory.

“It could be simply used by particular resorts, a resort that says: ‘We want to ensure there’s a high level of safety (and) will simply insist that no one is able to ski or snowboard on their hills without the equipment.”

“The ideal would be if a government said this is part of the law.”

Currently, most manufacturers follow U.S and European standards, but the Canadian guideline involves more rigid safety requirements, spelling out which areas of the head must be protected and defining minimum levels of shock absorption, stability and strength. The guideline also applies to helmets for tobogganing and sledding.

Walter said he hopes Canadians will demand that head protection they buy for themselves or their children lives up to the CSA standard.

“Now there’s going to be something they can go into a sports store and say, ‘I want this kind of helmet, I want this CSA mark on it. If you don’t have the CSA mark on it, I’m going someplace else.”‘

Richard Kinar, a former competitive freestyle skier from Vancouver, became alarmed after reading an article suggesting that some helmets sold in Canada offered no more protection than placing a bag of milk on one’s head.

Kinar said he and others who began experimenting in the early 1970s with freestyle skiing, with its aerial jumps and flips, had no idea how dangerous it was – or would become in the future.

“We really started a sport back then that is really putting a lot of people at risk,” he said, admitting that he wore no helmet. “What the kids are doing now is pushing the limits to the absolute extreme, and extreme sport is fuelling an epidemic of head injuries.”

Those brain injuries can not only be fatal but may also lead to life-long disabilities, said Ellie Wannamaker of the Canadian Physiotherapy Association.

Such an injury can lead to physical disabilities that range from muscle weakness to paralysis and cognitive problems that include short-term memory loss and learning disorders, said Wannamaker, a member of the brain injury team at Bloorview Kids Rehab in Toronto.

She believes certified helmets should be mandatory for recreational sports, just as wearing a seatbelt is required while driving in a motor vehicle.

“I don’t see why we can’t do that. The cost of this (a brain injury) to one family, to one child is incredibly huge and forever.”

So you see its a tough argument to counter – please though don’t make it a crime not to wear a helmet – thanks to Todd1462 for the video – a good reminder of how dangerous it can be when an accident happens – and that is all it needs to be – an accident – an event without apparent cause.

I was asked how long it took Herbert Nitsch to descend to 214m (extreme by anyone’s standard) and return to the surface, and I couldn’t find that information anywhere. Static time underwater is timed, but with depth dives it’s the depth that’s more important – not the time it takes although that is of course interesting … or so it seems.

I did find that on 17th March, whilst training for the competition at Dean’s Blue Hole, Herbert made a training dive to 92 meters. To reach the depth it took him 1min 38sec, and the total divetime was 3min 51sec.

If you are wondering how freedivers manage to achieve these record-breaking dives, Kerian Hibbs, who is also out there training at Dean’s Blue Hole, kindly took the time to explain it to me yesterday – so, from the horse’s mouth, here goes:

“The dives to depth in time do not relate to pool at all, and this description will concentrate on inhale dives only.

Lung Capacity:

When you inhale ready to dive on the surface, you then pack to maximum capacity. Of course this means that your chest cavity is bloated and ribs stretched. As you go deep the pressure makes the air in the lungs compress, so the pressure you feel on the surface (being stretched) reduces pretty quickly, say 3m and its comfortable again, but of course in doing so the pressure inside your lungs actually increases as the depth increases. So really, capacity does not change at all, its just volume changes.

Time:

Obviously as the depth increases, so does the time of the dive. The dive profile that most people get on the descent is around 1m/s, therefore a 90m dive (in theory) should reach the bottom at around 1 min 30 seconds. This is highly dependent on streamline, efficiency, kick strength, kick amplitude / frequency and buoyancy (at the surface – as this needs to be overcome before freefall can occur).

The ascent is different for all athletes and of course disciplines. You would expect that “constant weight no fins” will be slower ascent rate than with a wacking great monofin strapped to your feet” – however it depends on each individuals particular style and strengths.

To illustrate this, Kerian’s dive to 71m was 2 min’s 20 seconds. The descent was 1 min 18 seconds (slightly slow) but his ascent was pretty quick as he is efficient through the water due to his ‘Dynamic Style’ being pretty good.

Kerian tells me that there is a trend emerging where it looks like a lot of the divers are trying to come off the bottom faster than has been typical in the past. He attributes this to trying to avoid (CO2) Narcosis which bites pretty bad as the dives get longer.

This is an amazing video of Willaim Trubridge (williamtrubridge ) setting a new world record in 2007 – it gives an idea of the simplicity, achievement and extroadinary elegance of this silent and extreme sport. As Kerian says: “one dips slowly beneath the surface, opens ones eyes and finds oneself in another dimension…the pleasure is immediate”.

Sunday’s United States Open Snowboarding Championships final was somewhat lackluster, with several of the sport’s biggest stars out with injuries. Several contenders for spots on the United States Olympic team next season were absent, including Mason Aguirre, Danny Davis and Kevin Pearce.

But the most conspicuous absence was that of Shaun White, a gold medal winner in the 2006 Olympics in Turin, Italy, and the defending champion in halfpipe and slopestyle at the Open. White pulled out of competition before the halfpipe finals Saturday afternoon with an ankle injury. He injured his left ankle during training last week. A trainer worked with him Saturday morning, but White decided he could not compete. By doing so, White forfeited a chance to win the Ticket to Ride World Snowboard Tour championship.

After competing in the slopestyle finals the women who finished in the top three spots engaged in another competition at the awards ceremony to see who could drink a bottle of Champagne the fastest. Just as on the mountain, Kjersti Oestgaard Buaas won. “My mom would probably be like, Ohhh,” Oestgaard Buaas said, shaking her head. Speed on the course was another matter.

After several days of sun and warm weather, a snow squall blew through the Green Mountains just as the finals began. That led to poor visibility and slowed the slopestyle course so that several riders struggled to gain enough speed to launch over the jumps. “I still had speed for my first run, but no vision,” said Oestgaard Buaas, a 26-year-old from Norway, who won her second consecutive slopestyle title at the United States Open.

Eventually, the skies cleared in time for Oestgaard Buaas, and for Chas Guldemond in the men’s final, to produce winning runs on the 1,800-foot-long course, which consisted of two rails and four jumps.

On her third and final run, Oestgaard Buaas pulled her winning routine, a nosepress to 180 spin off the rail, followed by a 540 spin, a backside 360, a frontside 360, and finished with a frontside 720 — two full rotations — for a score of 92.0. Jenny Jones of Britain finished second with a score of 87.0, and Chanelle Sladics of Newport Beach, Calif., third with a 73.0.

Oestgaard Buaas, who finished fourth in the women’s halfpipe final Saturday, was named the women’s best overall rider.

For Guldemond, of Laconia, N.H., the stormy New England weather was no problem. He put together a winning run on his first run with a 270-degree spin onto the rail, and a 180 off, followed by a backside 900 spin, a backside 1,260 — four rotations — and finished with a 900-degree spin for a score of 94.5. “I don’t ever mind cruddy conditions,” Guldemond said. “I do pretty good in bad conditions.”

The United States Open was Guldemond’s 22nd competition this season. With the victory, he also clinched the Burton Global Open Series championship, a six-stop series. The payday for the two amounted to $120,000.

Sébastien Toutant, a 16-year-old from Montreal, was second in men’s slopestyle with a score of 92.17. Toutant had a loud cheering section during each of his runs. Afterward, his fans chanted, “Olé, olé, olé,” when his name was announced at the awards ceremony. Scotty Lago, of Seabrook, N.H., finished third with a score of 90.83.

Lago also won the quarterpipe competition at the Open on Friday night and was named the men’s best overall rider. “I am so pumped being the best overall rider at a contest with so much history,” Lago said about the Open, now in its 27th year. “Today is the best day I’ve ever had in snowboarding.” For the men, the Open was the last competitive event before the Olympic qualifying season begins next winter.

But with White out, Peetu Piiroinen, of Finland, clinched the season points standings and received the award Sunday night. Piiroinen finished second in the halfpipe finals Saturday and fourth in slopestyle. Jamie Anderson, the defending champion of the women’s T.T.R. World Tour, missed the Open competition because of an injury. Anderson leads the points standings this season heading into the final women’s event at the Roxy Chicken Jam from March 27 to 29 at Mammoth Mountain, Calif. Oestgaard Buaas is seventh in the standings. With her victory Sunday, she remains in contention for the title.

So whats all this slopestyle about – if you are new to the sport of snowboarding we thought you would be interested to see what we are talking about above when we refer to Oestgaard Buaas and Chas Gudemond runs above – 180 spins off the rail/onto the rail, 1,260s, backside 900 spins, frontside 720s……well check out the action from the 2007 US Open which was also held at Stratton, Vermont – thanks GuerillaGuru for the great video – now see if you can determine what spins these dudes are demonstrating.

canadiantourism are great at keeping in touch with us especially when we have blogged on something that they have an interest in – and the extreme sport of kite buggying falls neatly into this catagory; the beaches of Nova Scotia being particularly suitable…

Kite buggying is a sport for all ages. Kids as young as 8 have tried their hand at this thrills and spills sport – and become hooked. It’s a new sport that combines the best of everything… a combination of sand and wind, huge open spaces, fresh air and skill. A challenge to your senses, your reflexes, your muscles and your pilotage.

And if you want to test your skills against others you might consider entering the unusual contest at Berck sur Mer in Nord-Pas de Calais, France in May 2009.

If you’re into extreme sports, then this is the place for you – a high-class, high thrills Kite Buggying Race. Only the hardiest and most skillful riders attempt this contest.

The reputation of the Berck’s five hours of kite buggying is one of extreme endurance and incredible spectacle.

In September 2009 Berck sur Mer has a 6 hour kite buggy race.

It has been hard to find out more information on these contests – Please, if anyone knows, would you let us know too? Thanks.