Windsurfing – Championships

International Sailing Federation (ISF) is the governing body of Windsurfing race. Every participating country has its own governing body to organize the game successfully throughout the calendar year. Following is the list of some important tournaments in this category −

  • Olympic Windsurfing Class − It uses ‘One Design’ boards, with all sailors using the same boards, dagger boards, fins and sails.

  • Formula Windsurfing Class − The windsurfing boards are controlled by the ISF that are maximum 1 meter wide.

  • Race Board Class It uses longer windsurf boards with a dagger board and movable mast rail.

  • Slalom − It is a high speed race. Slalom boards are small and narrow, and require high winds.

  • Big Air − It is a competition to see who can record the highest jump or maneuver. A 3D accelerometer is worn to measure and record heights of the jumps.

  • Figure of Eight − All through the course, the sailor should be on a beam reach with two floating marks that have to be jibed around.

  • Downwind − More than two marks are laid and sailors sail a downwind course – jibing around each mark only once.

  • Super X − This is a new discipline in windsurfing competitions, a cross between freestyle and slalom.

  • Speed Sailing − It takes the average of each sailor’s best two speeds on the 500m course.

  • Freestyle − The surfer who has the greatest repertoire or manages to complete most stunts, wins. Freestyle is about show and competitors are judged on their creativity. Both the difficulty and the number of tricks make up the final score.

  • Wave − Bearing some similarities to freestyle, wave sailing has been a part of the sport for much longer (indeed, modern freestyle started off, in essence, as wave sailing without waves). Wave sailing took off during the rapid development of windsurfing on the Hawaiian islands of Oahu and Maui.

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