I didn’t say the foils don’t make a difference, that is a complete misread and an insane idea. They make a huge difference.
What I’m saying is:
- Across the top brands, they have converged on the same capabilities. Pick from 5++ brands, get talking to get access to their proto, then it’s on you.
- If they restricted to stock gear only, it wouldn’t make a difference to the outcome of the race. Some middle markers would be 10% faster and make no difference otherwise
- No foil is giving a rider an unfair advantage over the other rides because getting prototypes isn’t hard. It’s not like it’s sailing where some big money wnker is paying a pro team and building a $100m boat to claim the win. It’s still seems like kids having fun
Look at Kai, he switched to Axis from Cloud just before the race, to get onto faster foils. Is that bad? I don’t think so. He did exactly what I think any competitive person would do, switch.
I’d like to know who this is? Anyone in the top bunch could get onto Axis proto story, but they don’t because they are getting free gear from someone else (Eg Andrew riding Lift, he could talk to Axis and get their protos. Or switch teams). I’m struggling to see the sob stories of people not on protos
If what you are saying is that there is an extremely talented rider who has trained crazy hard is not placing because they are riding old foils, then I’d say it’s probably because they get them for free and or some other reason that has nothing to with the actual race