Re: Ridiculous registration fees??
| Subject | Re: Ridiculous registration fees?? |
| From | abw@cre.canon.co.uk (Andy Wardley) |
| Date | Mon, 11 May 1998 06:45:35 GMT |
| Newsgroups | rec.kites |
Codeykite <coreykite@aol.com> wrote:
> Who cares about sport kite comps?
Cobey makes some good points, the sentiment of which - "We must think about what the crowds want to see", is a good one. To increase interest in the sport, attract sponsorship and increase happiness, we must strive to make kiting a better attraction and more inviting for newcomers.
But let's not forget the fliers. If it's an ego thing, then so be it, but if people want to fly in competitions then they should be allowed to. After all, it's their festival as well.
My experience of festivals in the UK suggests that the general public do enjoy watching competitions. Competitive Kite flying, particularly in Team and Ballet events, proves to be as much a spectacle to interest them as the display kites do. There is still an underlying problem that the public are under-informed about what's going on in the competition and efforts should be made to improve that situation.
I've sat through countless mind-numbingly boring heats of Rokakku fights (as well as many more exciting ones, I hasten to add) and thousands of demonstrations of teddy-bear and sweet dropping and I've seen people flying two or three kites and landing a Rev on the commentator's head more times than I care to mention. These are all things to other people, so I accept them and accept the fact that other people enjoy watching them.
For me, and people like me, the variation, excitement and innovation is brought by competitive flying. Just as car companies will tell you that Formula 1 racing eventually brings benefits to the road car, we can say that competition inspires some of the best pilots and best kite designers to strive to improve their flying and products. These things push kiting forward in a direction that benefits the larger community.
And finally, if competition were to be shut away on a few spare weekends in the winter then you could probably count out most of the fliers and a great deal of the sponsors, too. Driving people away from kiting is the last thing we want to do.
All kiting is good.
Just my thoughts. No flames lit in there, I promise :-)=
A
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Andy Wardley <abw@kfs.org> Signature regenerating. Please remain seated.
<abw@cre.canon.co.uk> For a good time: http://www.kfs.org/~abw/