Features

Colin Colin Carroll’s Love Letters to Kiteboarding: Kids With Guns

Colin’s been off on holiday again. This time he decided to forgo his normal key speaker role at the annual Model Railway Enthusiast (MRE2022) convention in Crewe, donned his finest energy-drink-branded baseball cap, and headed off to Cape Town to seek his fortune, much like a modern day extreme sports version of Dick Whittington. What played out before him – through his unnecessarily colorfully polarized ski goggles – he’s been predicting for a while. So he is ultra-smug to fill you in on how three lads, scarcely old enough to buy themselves a pint afterwards, have left the King of the Air establishment sobbing in their hire cars outside KFC Bloubergstrand.

The Mission: Scottish Power

Youri Zoon and friend and photographer, Orestis Zoumpos, have been sending us tales of their missions to off-the-beaten-track destinations like Norway, or Greece out of season, where Youri ends up being not just the only kiter in the water, but the only person in the water full-stop. This time they headed to bonnie Scotland, and yes, once again Youri enjoyed empty beaches to himself.

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The Mission: Into the Wild

Head north from Norway and the archipelago of Svalbard is the last stop before you reach the North Pole. Kari Schibevaag is a fan of the area and headed there for a snowmobile and kiting trip with old friends. If you want to run into polar bears – and Kari advises you don’t – it looks like an awesome destination, a true Arctic wilderness. She certainly came away with some special memories from the trip.

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Tahiti Take Two

Victor Hays visited French Polynesia last year – which you can read about in issue 45 – but unfortunately that visit was cut short by Covid. So a return visit was definitely in order, and once again the paradise of Tahiti and its surrounding islands didn’t disappoint. We get the feeling Victor will be back for more next year, and who can blame him…

Desert Sessions

Their hearts set on one last mission before the Cape Town season started, Big Air riders Jett Bradshaw and Graham Howes, along with cameraman Kyle Cabano, embarked on a 3000 kilometer roundtrip to Namibia, with a truckload of Orbits in every size. They found not just a remote paradise known for breaking speed records in 50 knot winds, but also developed a deeper bond of friendship and brotherhood.

Top Gun

Young kiters can learn a lot from pro riders, coaches, marketing managers, photographers and others in the industry to guide their future careers. Knowing this, Duotone gathered together some of their newest hot shots at a camp in Egypt, to share the knowledge and stoke, and with KOTA around the corner for some of them, they would soon be putting the lessons they learnt into practice at the most significant competition of their lives yet.

51st State

As humans we occasionally feel compelled to make lists. Generally this is so we don’t forget things and to bring order to the chaos in our complicated and squidgy brains. Since its inception, kiting has been off on so many tangents, and has produced so many landmark moments, we may be at the point where a concise record needs to be taken, and maybe even in some loose order of significance. Colin’s probably not old enough to remember a pre-internet 90’s pop singles chart – horrible moments like Bryan Adams at number one for 16 weeks straight with that dire Robin Hood Prince of Thieves soundtrack for instance – but regardless, we managed to distract his digitally augmented face from Instagram just long enough to commission our Top Fifty Moments in Kiting. This was originally to coincide with fifty issues of TheKiteMag, but in true TheKiteMag style there was a last minute change of plan. The KOTA report last issue was deemed more important and eclipsed the moment somewhat, so here we are at issue 51.

Hot Dog

Dice the dog, who has already made a guest appearance on these illustrious pages back in issue 41, could be the most traveled kite dog in the world, getting to accompany Big Air star Zara Hoogenraad on kite trips around Europe. She can now add Brazil to her list of countries visited, as Zara took her along for the ride, both on the plane and on the water – Dice happily piggybacked for some kite sessions, which we think deserves a round of a-paws… Zara tells us all about their trip along Brazil’s northern coastline.

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Cold as Ice

Would you be willing to sacrifice your love of warm, tropical kite spots to hit up iceberg-strewn beaches and glacial lakes instead? Oswald Smith and Camille Delannoy went on a mystical mission and fully embraced the chilly waters of Iceland. Clad in Mystic’s latest winter gear, they were ready to face whatever the Land of Fire and Ice threw at them.