Maciek Rutkowski takes out a Mistral slalom board from the late 90s and his current FMX board out on the race course. You'll never expect what happens next. Actually, you will but he does a great job of describing the differences.
—
Maciek Rutkowski takes out a Mistral slalom board from the late 90s and his current FMX board out on the race course. You'll never expect what happens next. Actually, you will but he does a great job of describing the differences.
Nico's take:
So, similar performance, except new equipment is easier.
Reminds me of friend's presentation of competion sailplane development. In the '60s when gliders transitioned from wood & metal to fiberglass, best glide ratios (L/D) went from 20-30:1 to 30-40+:1. Designers focused mostly on performance which lead some quirky handling. Folks quickly realized that to be fast, you needed to have good handling to allow you to focus on the task and not worry about flying the glider. The next generation of gliders were developed with handling as a much higher priority.
Bill Herderich
I was having a somewhat related conversation Sunday night with someone and the topic of old school vs 15-20 yr old vs new school boards came up. I remember riding my nose cropped 1998 Mistral which was a really fun board to sail back in the day and the thing that struck me is how much easier jibes are now. The Mistral jibed great but, for me, it only seemed to have one jibe dictated by the long rails. Newer boards could more easily do a long drawn out jibe or quick, hard one without much fuss.
Also, in the video, you can see that even as pros, how much attention and focus they need to exit planing.
I think the big advance in easy riding (like your 'glass glider) came about 16-18 years ago when short boards broke the 60cm width barrier.