Fighting to control the wind on a board

* The author is part of the community of readers of La Vanguardia.

Oliver Thansan
Oliver Thansan
20 April 2024 Saturday 17:03
8 Reads
Fighting to control the wind on a board

* The author is part of the community of readers of La Vanguardia

I share in La Vanguardia Readers' Photos this photograph of a kitesurfer in Gavà Mar, in Baix Llobregat. He is seen taking advantage of the strong winds, almost 40 km/h at that time, which allows him to practice this beautiful sport.

This sporting practice is becoming more and more fashionable. When the beaches are empty of bathers and the wind is noticeable, lovers of this aquatic modality take advantage of the Baix Llobregat coast.

Currently, in our country there are one and a half million riders, a figure that increases year after year with 100,000 new athletes who take up kitesurfing in Spain.

The boom that this sport has suffered in recent years has allowed kitesurfing to be an Olympic discipline for the first time in the next 2024 Olympic Games to be held this summer in Paris.

Kitesurfing or kitesurfing (sometimes also called kiteboarding, or flysurfing) and even kiteboard adaptation has been proposed.

It is a sliding sport that consists of the use of a traction kite (kite, in English), which pulls the athlete (kitesurfer) along four or five lines, two fixed to the bar (direction), and the two or three The rest (of power) pass through the center of the bar and are attached to the body using a harness, allowing one to slide over the water using a board or a wakeboard designed for this purpose. Various modalities can be practiced; jumps and maneuvers (freestyle), racing between buoys (race) and surfing in waves (surfkite).