looking for the article...can you post the link...cheers man

In print it is a full page with a huge photo!

'fairly low-aerobic' hmm not sure I agree, especially when you are trying race and beat your mates

Great to see a media write-up on the sport, but geeez, has the writer ever riden a sailboard or even seen some serious windsurfing?? "Gentle execise that won't leave you wrung out" Hmmm, I must be doing another sport...

Stock photos from the nineties........helps reinforce the retro image

Cambodge said..
If that article is typical of the link between an activity/event and its reporting in a mainstream newspaper then what does that say about the news and current affairs reporting we are dished up?! Jeez!

It's funny you say that Cambodge, as pretty well everything reported in media is usually horribly inaccurate and / or exaggerated. And the more you know about a particular field, the worse the inaccuracies appear. I know nothing about windsurfing, but I know it ain't no gentle work out! But, any promotion of the sport is better than none. Would be interesting to see the facial expressions off the reader when he has his first "gentle workout". Those Tia Chi lessons never seemed so easy.

Something like this would have been good..... from "now"....







I worry about the future of the sport :/

There needs to be more "cool" factor in the media..... It's great that dudes that used to windsurf in the eighties, and have had families are now coming back to the sport, that's awesome, and probably the reason the culture is so friendly and mature as it is, but without some image promotion beyond the one design glory days and the retro nineties (which were good times might I add).... the sport will fade.....

Don't get me wrong though, awesome the article was done, and awesome coverage, but sex it up !!!!

JustinL said..
. . . A windsurfer can travel up to speeds of 48.7 knots per hour. . .

Nice article, Justin. It was published in today's Canberra Times, as well, albeit with a different photo.

I thought the "xx.x knots per hour" was the typo.

KA360 said..

K Dog said..

I worry about the future of the sport :/

Don't worry,seabreeze is going back to the grass roots and has now a new ONE DESIGN WINDSURFER category forum section .
Maybe when these inspirational characters bring the sport back we could have a Instruction/How to ,Freestyle/flowstyle and kids section.

K Dog said..

Stock photos from the nineties........helps reinforce the retro image

Some vocal minorities in our sport want to keep it that way.

*Face palm* Oh.....why......why....... don't people realize, if you don't get behind the shops, you don't get behind manufacturers....... you get no new kit in the future.... sport dies...... and you become a strange old man tinkering with old ropes, pulleys and a strange fiberglass plank with a strange triangle Dacron sail sitting in your garage murmuring about the good old days incoherently (and no doubt they were good - then), drunk on cheap port... as your wife ponders a fresh start away from you and your strange obsession with the past :P BEHOLD YOUR FUTURE WINDSURFING!!! HAHAHA. BEHOLD........!!!

Seriously though, hats off to you guys getting the articles up (bar the wife upgrade ones), you guys are great ambassadors to the sport. Wouldn't it be cool to see some articles in mens magazines, like Men's fitness magazines etc... have a big reader base.... AWA????? Do we have a strategy on sport promotion? There are some awesome athletes in windsurfing, from speed, to freestyle wave and slalom.....

And some local Vic news recently.... The Great Southern Star21/05/2013

vicspeedsailing.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/vss_star_21052013.pdf

Our Blog etc...

victorianspeedsailing.com/

Plus the whole point of the article was windsurfing is not dead and is not necessarily an 'extreme' sport.

K Dog said..

The article would have been best served with some new freeride pics for sure, agree it makes more sense to have an image associated to the text.......I was off on a more extreme tangent...... My gripe, which resulted in a rant, was how frustrating I find it when you see windsurfing portrayed in a historical context in mass media, when its so much more progressed now (gear wise, and ease)......

Yeah, fair call. You've given me an idea for a new topic.

JustinL said..
There is one mistake that is easy to spot, it says, "A windsurfer can travel up to speeds of 48.7 knots per hour".
regards Justin

Sorry, but the main error is the "... knots per hour." Knots per hour would be an acceleration, not a speed! In real life it's an absolutely meaningless statement.

On a more general note; there's a big difference between a pic that a professional art director chooses for reasons like the format, the layout, the way it complements the rest of the page, and the sharpness, and the pic that someone who is into the sport will choose.

If we are going to say that our experience as windsurfers gives us an expert's perspective about the article, then surely we should accept that an art director's experience in pic selection and article layout gives them an expert's perspective on the pics.... even if it's as simple as knowing what pics cost what, or how quickly they can be found when you're trying to make up an article.

One of the amazing things about windsurfing is that it can be everything from gentle to reasonably extreme, and while it would be good to see an article that showed all the facets of the sport, it's also good to see the less extreme side in print.

PS - to get a fairly objective idea of how other sports are portrayed in the media, I just did a Google image search for "SMH" and "cycling". The first pic that comes up is a "ghost bike"; an old steel roadie painted white and erected where a cyclist was killed. The second is a modern time trial bike- a pretty rare breed. The third is a bunch of round-Australia tourers. The fourth is a black and white shot of cyclists in 1900, the fifth a middle-aged guy on a hybrid, the sixth a bunch of women on girl's bikes in a field.

And cycling is booming. So if a boom sport has a mass-media image centred around cheap, simple, practical low-speed low-tech gear then what sort of image should a sport that isn't booming aim for?