Craig Cunningham puts the cat amongst the pigeons…
It’s nice to see the majority of freestylers these days trying to keep their kites low but I definitely think the original message has been misconstrued. When all the “wakestyle” legends from the Autofocus crew and people on forums like www.kitescoop.com were bitching about people having their kites too high and keeping it lower a few years back, they meant having it around 45 degrees. Maybe you heard this at your local beach from the boys sitting in peanut gallery?
I’ve seen a lot of people in the last year claiming a trick as being legit because their kite was 3m off the water but they themselves only went 1m off the water. Tricks like the “low mobe” in my opinion are just a backmobe where you didn’t go very high and to me looks pretty gash. Why not put your kite at 45 and actually generate some solid pop and height on your tricks?
I’ve never been to a PKRA stop before, coming from North America, my friends and I (the NA Blend Crew) are just a lot more focused on park riding, but while I was in Germany this past August working with a sponsor on a creative project I had time to go check out the stop at Saint Peter Ording. I was really impressed with the high level of freestyle riding going down, but the one thing that really confused me was how high people we’re being scored for doing small tricks with their kite super low.
Seems to me people didn’t quite understand that kite low just meant don’t have your kite a lunchtime aka 12 o’clock when you’re doing your tricks and all of a sudden having your kite on the water was the thing to do. Now don’t get me wrong: if two riders do the same trick and go the same height then the rider with the lower kite gains some style points for sure. But if one rider has their kite at 45 and goes massive and one has their kite on the water but only goes 1.5m high it’s pretty obvious to me what I’d rather see…
At the end of the day though, T.I.K. (this is kiteboarding) and we’re just all out there trying to do what feels good to us, I know that’s how I ride! So don’t be a cookie cutter rider and only do the tricks that people tell you are cool – do your own thing, be original and don’t forget to send it every now and then!
And here's Craig keeping things on the down low:
