Recent features from the print magazine...
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Leo Verrecchia tells us what it takes to remain calm and composed when competing in your first ever international competition. His experience at the GKA Freestyle Kite World Cup in Brazil, where he got through to the quarterfinals – an impressive achievement when you’re going up against some of the best in the business – helped him go on to win the Freestyle Nationals in his home country of Australia in January.
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Roderick Pijls is a talented freestyle and wave rider, but less than two years ago added racing to his repertoire. He tells us how he got into the discipline and is striving to reach the Olympics. Luckily he’s joined forces with his sponsor Appletree to work on developing the best boards possible…
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Last issue we heard from Kari Schibevaag who flew to the archipelago of Svalbard – the last stop before the North Pole – for a quick snowkite trip and polar bear avoidance. This time she also heads north but staying on mainland Norway, for a longer trip on the Finnmark Plateau, something she’s dreamed about crossing with skis and a sled for a long time.
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If you fancy chucking in your job and finding employment in the kite industry, read on to find out more about a year in the life of a kite pro turned product tester, Brandon Scheid. The fringe benefits? A lot of travel – Brandon’s 2022 included trips to Maui, Chile and Fiji, as well as testing and snowkiting in his home spot of Hood River. Any negatives to the job? Your knees might not thank you…
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Alina Kornelli, who loves to dabble in all kite disciplines and nowadays wingfoiling too, has her eyes set firmly on the 2024 Olympics. Her competition schedule saw her take part in the Formula Kite World Championships in Sardinia last year, after which she stayed on to road trip the beautiful Italian island and do a photoshoot. Did she manage to score the specific shot photographer Lukas Stiller had in mind though…?
The women of Big Air undeniably stole the show at Big Air Kite League’s latest competition in Cape Town. 12 serious, driven, and dedicated women traded in traditional kiting gender norms of bikinis and smiles for wetsuits, impact vests, and serious game faces. The crowd who came to see them compete was rewarded with women hucking their biggest and most aggressive tricks to date in properly windy Big Air conditions. No one held back. The women threw down massive tricks indistinguishable from the men, including not one but two queens attempting and landing the world’s first double loops for their division. After working individually and as a group for years to raise their collective skill level, the progression from women on this extreme side of kiting is undeniable. They train hard and kite harder to continue to push the ceiling higher for each other. And they don’t come to play…
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F-ONE team riders Francesca Maini, Hendrick Lopes, Marcela Witt, Maxime Chabloz, Mitu Monteiro and Paul Serin headed to Oman for an epic adventure in the Arabian desert. They put on a good show for the locals, found some camels of course, and assembled a short film of their escapades, Sultans of Wind, that you can catch on YouTube.
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Photographer Andre Magarao doesn’t just hang out behind the lens when snapping pro kiters like Gianmaria Coccoluto, Noè Font, Ewan Jaspan, Kiko Roig Torres and Ramiro Gallart in Brazil. He ends up hanging out with them too and becoming firm friends. At the end of last year they shared a house in the freestyle paradise of Taiba. Andre talked us through the trip…
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Brazilian-born Rafael Raso spent his childhood watching and learning the skills needed for board shaping. He now lives on the south coast of England where he started his own shaping business. Hats off to him, as he also holds down two other jobs so he can keep his shaping business going, and still manages to find time to kite himself. True dedication…
Deury Corniel was Vice World Champion in freestyle in 2019 and Youth World Champion before that. This year, despite recovering from a knee injury, he has been giving the other freestyle competitors a run for their money, as well as competing in Formula Kite foil racing. We look forward to seeing what the future holds for this talented rider from the Dominican Republic, and also what his fellow pros are keen to ask him…
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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.
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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.
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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