PKRA QLD round

Does anyone know if / how to get a wild card entry to this ?

Nick

rock up in the DeLorean.

whoever catches the most cloud trout in the week prior to the comp wins.

But I can't do any pullups :)

Doesn't matter how much you try to cut them down they will always be better than you.

Secretly you envy their skills and their lifestyle but, because you will never attain the level of skill required to perform, you will attempt to trivialise them.

Uniquely Australian habit.

If your mate Andy wasn't winning the PKRA you wouldn't give a crap. Mate it's a flawed competition, why do you think Aaron is not competing this year. Most of the "top" riders don't even know proper trick names or really place any value over style. I mean you can say this is not wakeboarding as much as you like but pretty much all of the tricks are from wakeboarding and in my opinion look much better when done low hard and fast like a wakeboarder rather than dangling and pulling up and doing an extra handlepass.The lower more powered moves tend to be more fluid and natural where as their higher counterparts tend to be almost mechanical step like in nature.

Due to the unique nature of kiting there are so many variables that come into play, location, wind strength, kite , water conditions etc. where as in wakeboarding everything is a lot more constant and of course this is going to resort in a much larger variation on how tricks are done. Variation in itself is not a bad thing, IMO it is actually what made the early Maui crew so good to watch that they had their unique styles. Unfortunately when it comes to quantifying how good a trick for a competition is it is very difficult to reach a consensus due to the many variables.

Traditionally in the PKRA the more rotations and the more handlepasses the better the trick is however this really only takes into account a few variables rather than the whole package. In the past style, power and actual techincal points about the tricks (is the raley actually a raley, did the sbend actually get the legs above the head etc) have really been de-emphasized leading to riders claiming just about anything under the sun if it remotely looks like the trick.

A lot of riders have become disenchanted with this as the product is something to them is no longer enjoyable to watch and really has become a competition of spin to win. The growing movement of pro team riders who do not compete and ride with their own unique style and power is reflective of this. Now who do we blame the competitions, the riders? Well the PKRA judging format is decided by the riders so really it is down the the riders if they want to make a change to do it. However regardless of whoever fault it is, the judging criteria as it stands encourages an ugly style of riding.

I have met many of these PKRA riders and riden with them, including Andy. It is nothing against them personally or taking anything away from their achievements, it still requires a great amount of skill to win PKRA (more than I have by quite a bit). It is a statement that I do not enjoy watching the riding style PKRA competition promotes.

agree with space monkey.. i know fair few pkra riders.. top blokes with lots of skills in kiting... just have a different style that i find not as pleasing on the eye.. thumbs up to them though for making the most out of cool sport..

Sounds about right to me hahaha.

p.s.
Hey for anyone out their that is unsure or just wants a tip, don't buy white frame sunnys... ever. and dont "tweak the ****" out your new era cap so it is on sideways... It makes you look like a ****ing retard.

love u 2 mate, I wasn't having a go at epilectics, so sorry If I offended you. Sounds like you should stay away from the forum if your so touchy.

I was having a dig at the PKRA for almost the same reasons as spacemonkey. Its not about the level of skill involved because them boys have talent. But I just don't agree with the way the sport is being pushed by the pkra,frankly IMO it sucks to watch, and I am a big fan of watching STYLISH kiting. I know its all up to individual taste, but how many of you would buy a DVD of the pkra and watch it over and over? Also I hate the image projected by the PKRA of kiting being all about young dudes too cool for school wearing sideways caps, arses hanging out their pants, when in reality the average kiter comes nowhere near this sterotype.

It's what ever floats your boat go out there and have fun if you make a living of it that great. It's just down to your personal style

I don't see any "tall poppy" syndrome happening here at all. I see some people making the usual jokes and others pointing out legitimate flaws.
Exactly the same would happen in any sport if the competitions didn't make sense... Imagine how much negative press a skate or snow world championship tour would get if all it focused on was how many spins you could do, or how tech you can make it in every trick, regardless of what it looks like.
I know PKRA is getting slightly better so you have to give them some credit for trying. But when you watch some footage and see double pullups you need to start asking "why"?

Jeez rowdy they have to separate the chaff from the hay somehow.
Imagine a diving competition at the olympics if it was just how good they looked before they hit the water.
They could land with a belly flop as long as they didn't spin too much and looked cool.
I know all that tech stuff is hard to do coz I sure as hell can't do it .
But I don't incessantly criticise and poke fun at it just because I know it's above my expertise and I don't like the look of it.
Do you want it all to come down to your level so you can keep up?
Will you rest in peace when we are all in boots and looking real cool.

Well Dave I just don't know what to say I thought maybe a well thought out written response would be better than posting some rabble, guess I was wrong. If you ask me your the one with tall poppy syndrome, if anyone. You choosing to keep attacking the posters rather than the points they raise within their posts, even when they make an effort to explain their opinions.

I guarantee Rowdy and Cam are both much better riders than you are yet you are effectively cutting them down. Which is really besides the point because it is just an opinion and everyone has got one and is entitled to share it (although not in your opinion).

You really self defeat yourself with that example, even the most techy trick diving requires a good landing and it must look good technically. The whole point I raised before is that the PKRA is a bit like a diver jumping off the diving board and doing 5 front flips but cannonballing into the landings but getting a better score than say a 3 front flip perfect entry. PKRA criteria are skewed towards spinning and handlepassing rather than style and finesse. I'm not saying don't do mobe 7's etc, more so if your going to do them then they need to be of good quality to score well and that a simpler trick should score better if executed properly.

So does "Style" look good or not ?
maybe it just feels good

using your diving analogy, the landing has to be perfect otherwise it doesnt score well... so yes they should stick to slightly easier tricks and get them good and then move to the next one, instead of learning 5 different sloppy tricks at once then just mashing them together in a heat

Those guys, Tiger, shumacher etc... aren't going to to be questioned, for one good reason, they aren't doing a board sport, they aren't doing something that is even partially based on or revolves around style, no one cares whether they have it or use it, the only thing people care about is whether they sink that put or cross that line, they aren't judged on how they do it... I think this is why you can't fathom any arguments people place against PKRA, because you don't understand boardsports, you seem to only recognise results.

I do show respect where respect is due, I have told Andy that I think it's great he is winning comps now and I am mega proud of him. I have also told him when talking about style and other stuff that I think he needs to work on it. Thats how I am.

I'm not joining any group of riders, I do my own thing, I compete if I want, I don't if I don't want to. I came 4th at the core jam last comp I went in, voted by people I don't even know. So I'm not exactly being beaten in comps, and if I was it wouldn't phase me. I wasn't their to ride in front of cameras, I wasn't their to get shots, I was their because I wanted to help a mate build rails and I wanted to ride them myself.

"""***Finding out who is best in the world is not about what looks good or who has the most style. its about who can do the **** that no one else can, on the day, against everyone else. the hardest tricks, today, now, no excuses."""


This is your opinion and I respect that, but there are a lot of other people and a lot of other boardsports who really disagree.

"""compare to other sports - when is the world champion told he's been doing it all wrong? he should be doing it this way, with more style."""


Funny you mention it but it has happened in a lot of sports, it has happened in skating way more than once. Usually the people who had the memorable style and were nice to watch are the guys you can remember and are still in the business and others from the same time who won all the comps you can barely put a name to and are long gone. Lance mountain even talks about a time when Tony Hawk of all people was shut out of skateboarding... Not only a world champion, but a pioneer in many respects.


Here's a few questions with Lance Mountain, take a read, some of it is pretty relevant other bits not so much:


Skateboarding and surfing have nothing to do with each other now.
I think for the early guys, it did. It looked rad. But, it’s totally different now. You can’t frontside flip down fifteen stairs with surf-style. You just can’t do it. It has nothing to do with it.

What I think he’s getting at is, if someone went off a 15-foot stair and pulled a nollie heelflip quadruple whatever, landed it and then drug his hand like he was in a wave, then it would be ok.
The modern guys are determining what style is, and to drag your hand off is bad style, but landing it perfectly clean is good style. The whole concept of style has changed. It was changing around the time that I was on Variflex. Everyone that was on Variflex was hated for not having style. They were robots.

They were learning all the new tricks.
They were pushing the tricks, but I was stuck in another realm because I skated with ramp style.
The same thing is going on with the Pissdrunx. Those guys are probably considered to be ‘slash dog style guys’. Those guys have more style in some ways than other guys, but a lot of dudes are saying they’re no good. People are confusing fashion with style.

I don’t think so. But he had good style.
He skated like a surfer. I think Rune Glifberg, who never surfed, has some techniques that Hosoi had. Whereas, Bob [Burnquist] surfs a lot but has none of that style. He’s just all over the place. He does whatever he wants to do. Make it at any cost.


There you go, someone saying bob burnquist has no style. As for thinking kiteboarding has a bit of rabble and rivalry i think you need to wisen up, here is just a snippet of what kind of stuff happened in the early skate days.


No one really hated the Variflex guys.
We got spit on all the time. Steve Alba blew his nose on me. All those dudes hucked spit all over Eddie during that one contest. I was standing right there with Fausto when it was head to head with Duane and Eddie. Eddie was doing a sweeper and he missed his tail and Fausto and his whole crew were making everybody stoked. Then he jumped on it and made it and they just shut up. It was rad rivalry. I remember Duane telling me I was the only one they liked out of the crew. I remember seeing Duane kicking some dude at big O, and just thinking, “These guys I like are kicking people in the head”. I went with my dad to Marina to practice for some contest, and my dad’s really conservative, so we pull up to Marina and the Circle Jerks are playing. It was a full punk show and my dad is like, “What is this craziness?” And Duane comes up with dyed hair and sits down and starts talking to my dad. I was super scared thinking I’m not going to be able to skate again because he said something crazy.

Jason Dill says that skateboarding isn’t a sport, it’s an art form.
To the ones that will skate all their life, yes. To the ones that are skating for a little bit or to make a living off it, it’s not an art form. It still is in a way, but it’s skateboarding. It’s neither.

When you bring money into anything, it changes the core of it. The pros are making more money now than ever.
The guys that are making money right now, most of them have skated for a long time.

They’ve paid their dues.
But there are so many kids coming into it right now. I’m dealing with amateurs that have skated for a year or two and they film and do everything the pros do. They have their own little posses. They have generators and they go out and film. And they have their sponsors already. They have their sunglass sponsor, and clothes sponsor, and they’re getting all hooked up. But none of them are sponsored. It’s just this fabricated thing. They just mimic what they see, and they think that’s what it is. There’s a lot more to it than that. That’s what they missed. That’s the difference. They missed finding out what it’s all about for themselves. They see it and think that’s what it’s about, so they go straight there and try to get it. It’s tricks, it’s sponsorship, it’s money, and it’s what’s popular. They think vert skating is lame because it’s not popular. Before, there was no vert skating or street skating, it was just skateboarding. If a kid sees Jamie Thomas grind a 20 stair handrail or Koston do a switch flip they are more likely to relate to it by trying it on the flatground or a small rail. They video it to show others that they did what Jamie did. But what Jamie and Koston have done is different then what others are doing. That’s why they’re standouts. For some kids, it’s the drive to be sponsored that keeps them from skating everything. It’s not based upon trying it for themselves and knowing if it’s lame or not. Ask Anthony van England, known for one type of skating, but who can enjoy the feeling a grind in a pool. It’s all skating. But, now a skateboard is kind of like a tennis racket. You just go to the store and buy it. Now, it’s just a sport item.

Skateboarder mag was as political as anything was.
I think now it’s harder for kids to sort out what’s good. Like, you’ll see one of the best photos of [Eric] Koston or Tony [Hawk] and across the page or on the cover is a skater you never saw before and will never see again with the same type of photo. All these things play into it. The magazines tried to say that Tony wasn’t rad. He was almost shut out of skateboarding in the ‘90s.

How can that be?
Because it wasn’t cool. ‘Tony Hawk is not cool. He’s a vert guy. It’s all about street now’. They just shut him out of skateboarding and he was like “Whatever. I’m just going to keep doing my thing”. Now there’s a whole new breed of kids that think he’s the best. It has all been paid back to him, no matter what skateboarding tried to do to him as an industry. But the magazines during that time said, ‘Tony Hawk is no good’. They said all the guys that do flatland are the best.

It seems as though it’s segregated.
That’s what the magazines did, they segregated it. It was a business thing. And there’s some people to blame for it.

Well let’s blame them.
It sorted out by itself, so it doesn’t matter.