This board looks like it would of been peak competive windsurfing, but seems like it was never an olympic class. Someone on hear must know why...
Select to expand quotecammd said..
Because the Mistral One Design was the Olympic class 1996 & 2000 I think
Yeah I guess they wouldn't compete against themselves. Interesting that the windsurfer never made it to the olympics
Select to expand quotethedoor said..cammd said..Because the Mistral One Design was the Olympic class 1996 & 2000 I think
Yeah I guess they wouldn't compete against themselves. Interesting that the windsurfer never made it to the olympics
Mistral One Design also in Athens 2004 when Gal Fridman took Gold for Israel. Windsurfer class was a demonstration Olympic event in 1984 in Los Angeles although Windglider was the main official event.Windsurfing was first at the sailing program at the LA Olympics in 1984. At the time were two main types of sailboards available for possible inclusion, the original Windsurfer One Design or the Windglider. In a controversial decision, the IOC chose to use the Windglider as the official craft, and succumbing to pressure, they also organized windsurfing demonstration events using the Windsurfer One Design, designed by Hoyle Schweitzer at, the same Olympic Games.The Windglider class rules didn't allow harnesses. Gold was taken by Stephan Van Den Berg of the Netherlands in Windglider and Gold was taken by Bruce Wylie of Australia in the Windsurfer class demonstration mens at LA Olympics. Sarah Kenny of Australia came 7th in the women's event for Windsurfer in LA, where Karen Morch of Canada took gold in the women's Windsurfer. There was no women's event in Windglider.
www.surfertoday.com/windsurfing/the-history-of-olympic-windsurfing
Select to expand quotethedoor said..
This board looks like it would of been peak competive windsurfing, but seems like it was never an olympic class. Someone on hear must know why...
The Equipe II is bigger and therefore normally quicker for medium to heavy sailors than the IMCO, especially in marginal planing conditions IMHO, but as someone who has an IMCO and an E2 I can say that the E2 is a lot more fragile than the IMCOs made in the same factory. The difference in speed is only a couple of percent so moving to a more fragile board wasn't worth it. Windsurfing is in the Games largely because the gear is comparatively cheap and therefore lots of poorer countries can have sailors in the Olympics. The IOC rates sports on the number of countries that compete in the Games. Many countries can't afford to have all their Olympic gear made obsolete so if the IMCO was dumped too early and poorer nations dropped out of Olympic windsurfing, sailing would have suffered according to the IOC's Olympic Programme Commission rating system.
I have a Superlight 2 same size and volume as the equipe but with the durability of the one design
Riding my SL2 in the 2022 Peel Island marathon - appears to be riding the same as the EQ2 in the video above when planning in similar wave state:
The Mistral One design when first released in 1989 was the exact same shape as the Equipe 1.5 which was essentially the lighter version of the same board, then there was the Equipe 1.5 XR which was lighter again, weighed 13kg but was very fragile. Both boards had 235 litres of volume
Personally back then I raced the One Design in regional and national events because I couldn't afford the more expensive Equipe
As far as I can remember the One Design was brought with the aim for it to be the class raced in the Olympics
When the Equipe 2 was released with the higher volume of 258 litres, the one design kept the same shape until it was discontinued and was never updated.
The Equipe 2 was never designed to be an olympic board
