Yoo-hoo wave and wind addicts, how often and why do pros ride production boards?
Reverse question why put in production a pro's board?
Also, what if a team has different needs from their members but for similar conditions?
For my team (Simmer) there are two reasons not riding production. 1. I want them to try some new stuff. 2. They need some special stuff for some special conditions. In principle, there could be a third reason amounting to some rider wanting something particular for his or hers particular style. I have had no such riders yet, except myself. I ride quite different boards compared to what I develop for production. Examples: Kai Katchadourian has for years had a special Jaws board. H sailed the production Fly 92 there too, but ultimately Jaws need a special board. As of now I'm developing a new Jaws board for Kai, and a new custom special for Cabo Verde. Interestingly, the origiginal Jawas board was developed from the 2011 Simmer freewave. Then that rocker many years later became the backbone for most of our production fleet. So stuff goes around and comes around.
Alessio Stillrich asked for a special Pozo board two years ago, and we designed one together. It's a 75 liter board. Except for Pozo he rides only production. But again... when we are now revising out Helix freewave range, we brought over the rocker from Allessios custom, which has proven itself as super stable and stable fast and free running - just what we were looking for for the upcoming Helix revision. In addition to teamrider protos and customs, at times inspiration for production boards can come from individual customs for reguler customers too.
Select to expand quoteOla H said..
For my team (Simmer) there are two reasons not riding production. 1. I want them to try some new stuff. 2. They need some special stuff for some special conditions. In principle, there could be a third reason amounting to some rider wanting something particular for his or hers particular style. I have had no such riders yet, except myself. I ride quite different boards compared to what I develop for production. Examples: Kai Katchadourian has for years had a special Jaws board. H sailed the production Fly 92 there too, but ultimately Jaws need a special board. As of now I'm developing a new Jaws board for Kai, and a new custom special for Cabo Verde. Interestingly, the origiginal Jawas board was developed from the 2011 Simmer freewave. Then that rocker many years later became the backbone for most of our production fleet. So stuff goes around and comes around.
Alessio Stillrich asked for a special Pozo board two years ago, and we designed one together. It's a 75 liter board. Except for Pozo he rides only production. But again... when we are now revising out Helix freewave range, we brought over the rocker from Allessios custom, which has proven itself as super stable and stable fast and free running - just what we were looking for for the upcoming Helix revision. In addition to teamrider protos and customs, at times inspiration for production boards can come from individual customs for reguler customers too.
Great answer! Thanks for sharing the inside info.
Im totally OK seeing pros on customs. In fact I kind of expect it, for all the reasons you said. It's great to have the top guys working on ideas that can make it down to us punters,.
What I can't stand is when the pros use fully custom boards painted to look like a current gen production board (including painting on the wrong volume!)
That's just flat out false advertising. I've never got why brands can't just use a standard logo of their brand for the pros custom board graphics.
Thank you. Besides personal preference competition may also dictate changes? Course angles, number of turns, wave jump marks, etc.
When I was in land sailing with lots of low wind days, I noted a lack of low wind freeride options.
We had to resort to detuned formula boards so we could ride them on a beam reach. Starboard did come with the Ftype but discontinued them, JP followed with super light wind model.
Another example for waves Kevin Pritchard's board is completely different than any other board I tried and worse that's available today. Yet it works for both jumps and waves, maybe not so much in mushy waves.
