So only one beer then? 
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discussion on white board vs digital, strava, whatsapp, screenshots etc for social racing
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It does seem like the Hawaii series could stand to be harder. M2M two days before M2O was a lot easier than most people thought Iâm sure.
Keep it simple:
Big Island â Maui â Molokai â Oahu â Kauai
Do that over a week. *Not sure the first leg is feasible on a foil. 
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Yeah I think the elite end it would be cool to see multi day racing, safety and logistics become a hassle, but it would be compelling
Most Prio should be on Media Coverage. So people can actually see and follow the action. Tour de France Style for racing and WSL like for surfing.
At least two disciplines:
RACE
-fastest from A to B like this year but with a waiting period so conditions are proper (emphasis on fastest times)
- different distances 10, 50 and 100+km
- multiple races per day/week for the 10-50km distances
- multiple course settings optimized on winddirection
SURF
-1vs1 Heats - Bracket Style Competition (emphasis on radical turns, carves, manouvers, flowy lines and seamless connectionsâŚ)
-1-5km course
Kinda like WSL for DW but with better commentators
Yeah exactly,
WSL format doesnât appeal personally for me as a concept.
Racing is interesting, novel and would be competitive. I think a few bigs drones would be sufficient to cover it without crazy coverage budget. Iâve been collecting snippets here around the idea of more interesting races, but nothing much yet that is additional to this thread
I donât think racing will ever be less pump dependent no matter how you change the course or format. Racing is by definition a competition of speed and pumping is âfreeâ speed. Competitors will always pump as hard as they can the whole time and racing will continue to get more physical.
I feel a more technical or varied course will bring an additional strategic aspect and allow for more passing instead of most of the race being decided in the beginning. This is where the gorge races are really interesting as conditions change a lot through different sections of the river. Cutting wonât do as much as youâd think, my speed and required foil doesnât change a ton even past 45°. Changing the bump conditions is the best way to introduce strategy but will come at the cost of making the race even more of a grind.
I see a lot of potential in short fun races. John Hearn did a Kaikos prone race with unlimited runs a while back and it was a blast. Everyone ended up offset so while you were taking a break socializing and eating you could still watch top finishers come in. Super entertaining.
Surf downwind is really hard to spectate and set up judging since it all happens so far out. Places like the hatchery would be no problem but most ocean runs would be tricky.
What could work is a team format where each pair of riders has to film each other and best pair of 15-30 sec clips of the day win. The highlight clips can be posted on social media. Kind of a semi-virtual event. This could be an additional division on top of things like longest/slowest run, most runs of the day, fastest km etc.
It is important that events are fun for everyone and I think food/drinks at the bottom and unlimited rides are attractive if you arenât looking to win.
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Thanks for the insights @KDW! Best to hear it from you, having seen it all 
Totally agree that pumping is fundamental, itâs like cycling a bicycle, and I think is what makes it more interesting than sailing races. What makes cycling races exciting is that they are all about energy conservation and tactics around when to go hard to stretch other competitors, and I think changing the formats to force energy conservation is what would make it more interesting.
I like the idea of âgatesâ, which is what makes offshore sailing very interesting, tidal gates where you cannot pass near headlands at certain tides, but they are the shortest lines, meaning you either extend or lose your advantage if you get it wrong. The trick here will be to make it more interesting without making it more of a grind. Not entirely obvious how youâd do that. China walls seemed to have just punished the intermediates!
On the angle thing, do you have any idea for downwind polars? Iâd imagine it is something like a broad reach is the fastest point of angle, but then maybe the VMG is better heading straighter with the energy. Iâd imagine this could be factored into making courses that were more tactical. I imagine critical will be 90° angles, or something that forces a change in tactics.
Yeah this to me is critical, the most fun events (downhill, not downwindâŚ) Iâve been at in the past have been freerides, where there is a shuttle, laps and then a fun race at the end for bragging rights but not really the main deal.
This might be interesting in tidal flow spots, eg this spot is 100m from shore, and you can get âlapsâ within throwing distance. Iâd be interested in seeing how radical you can get with zero pumps. That might be a novel event, but in general I find the idea of a subjectively judged event generally a bit hard to build interest around.
A useful framing here is around freeride, slopestyle, jam etc but itâs far from an obvious discipline, and WSL beach heat format does make more sense from logistics perspective if you just want to see radial stuff
I donât think you can really apply a polar in the same way. The max angle while staying on one swell would be arctan(swell_speed/foil_speed).
Here are some rough polars from a run on my smallest front wing (570cm2 x 80cm) on a good day. Some angles are a little bit faster due to the influence of turning at speed.
My feeling was that until 90° or so a smaller foil would be faster. At these angles your riding style is closer to dynamic soaring like a seabird. I feel a larger foil would only help if the angle is above 90° ish and youâre no longer using bumps as the primary source of energy.
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Amazing, that is super interesting.
One way of thinking about course design would be to make the course push you to take angles just where your polars start to suffer, that zone where youâre dropping down to 25-30kmh.
Exactly! I think the best foiler is the one who can most efficiently utilise this, and whoever can foil closest to the wind is the most efficient. This is like a great sailors who can get in a groove and point just a bit higher than everyone else.
With that in mind, this is might sound a bit odd, but how about Maximum Distance racing. You go out in 25 knots, and whoever can cover the most distance between the start and end of a run is the winner.
Consider paragliding distance racing where you use thermals to overcome gravity, but here the bumps are your thermals.
Eventually possible to have âUpwindâ race sections, where the energy gained from the bumps going downwind can be harnessed to efficiently cover ground and allow you to progress upwindâŚ?
I think you guys are describing Olympic Canoeing.
I was thinking the same thing! I think that would be really a really cool way to approach itâŚ
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From EP #137 with Dave Kalama on where we have arrived at in SUP-downwind racing:
"Guys are going freaking fast, like crazy fast. Itâs amazing, I knew foils were fast and I felt like we were going fast two, three, four years ago, but we were crawling, literally crawling compared to what guys are doing now. But itâs not just an arms race anymore, like it was for the last couple years letâs say, and it has truly become a fitness race.
And Iâve seen and heard a few guys almost complain about that, the racing is too fast, so we need to change something. Thatâs absurd, thatâs asinine ⌠racing is racing, and you get from Point A to Point B as quickly as you can- period. And what has evolved out of that basic concept is the need to pump more, to generate more speed to go faster.
So I think it has become, just like every other paddle sport across that channel ⌠everything while line is extremely important. And your ability to read the water and find all of the opportunities out there, and with foiling line has become less important, and more about the pure fitness because of the efficiency of the foils, which is interesting. But at every level of every sport, usually the most fit guys, if they donât win, they are on the podium at the very least, and I think itâs true with foiling too."
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good conversation between Edo and James Casey about the race formats.
My takeaway is that there is probably an interest in making the races more technical, in order to reduce the âpure staminaâ aspect of it. Reminds me of Enduro style mountain biking as a nice halfway between downhill and cross country.
Josh Ku has been trying a cool surf comp style downwind format. Early days but itâs a cool idea
I like racing things, but I donât really find downwind foil racing or speed to be a goal for me personally with foiling. I am definitely coming at the sport from a surfing perspective, trying to prioritize flow and efficiency and style over pure speed in one direction. As such I guess I donât really understand or have much interest in the dw race scene. More varied courses or competitions would be a step in the right direction in my opinion.
On a side note, I like what Josh is doing with the side by side foil vids, although as a valid comp form I absolutely hate the judged aspect of competitive surfing so personally Iâm not that interested in persuing a judged format. But, this video really solidified for me that I have zero interest in foil drive. Watching Josh trip over that thing on every run and never really be able to get his flow going because of it is a great illustration of how they affect style and flow. The contrast with Jack was really stark to me, and I appreciated the video for this. Probably not what Josh intended haha.
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Josh v Zane. Just posted yesterday. This oneâs interesting in that they are both riding the same board. Neither had ridden it before
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Here is my comment on that vid fwiw.
Thanks for sharing, love the idea, definitely matches to what people enjoy about dw is the snowboard back country feel. You could do a virtual comp where you get to submit your best 2min section and then score each. I do like the idea of the same conditions because obviously someone at Hood is going to look better.
- Gain points for linking consecutive bumps, 360 carves, tips out, holding turns to completion, snap cutbacks
- Lose points for pumping, touchdowns, going straight
But, and I say it with all respect - this looked somewhat forced for you guys. Conditions looked tricky, struggle to get a rhythm going, so for me the flow wasnât there. (pro riders, Iâve come to expect the edited version, so take this as intended - constructive)
I guess a good test is that I wouldnât show this to surf mates to impress them. I would show them the Hood river one, with you and Jack, that was really good.
Maybe board was too big, making turns look a bit more nursed. Another way of saying this is that if the conditions arenât good, itâs hard to make the foiling look smooth. Reminds me of a surf contest in onshore grovel, you can judge it, but its tough to make much of it.
On the whole, I really like the idea of this. Maybe an idea is the parawing or efoil for these tricky conditions. That way you ride the best foil and board for the conditions, and donât have to worry about paddle ups. But I like the experimentation. Very cool
Iâll reply on YouTube to help his algorithm.
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