Penalty imposed on kiteboard manufacturer

As required by class rule B.4 the Temavento Brand and ISAF have been notified today about the final outcome of the investigations following equipment inconsistencies found during the 2013 Kiteracing European Championships, where 18 sailors were disqualified for using equipment with measurements outside reasonable production tolerances.

The class rules require all equipment used in course racing events to be “series production”, and after further investigation, the sailors were using boards found to be shaped differently than the production specification.

At the event, the International Jury disqualified all sailors using the non-compliant boards from all races on day one and two, and to ban them from further use. After further review, no additional penalty will be imposed on any sailor.

However, a penalty has been imposed against the brand, following discussions with ISAF and taking input from incidents during the 2013 Americas Cup and similar issues during the early days of windsurfing raceboard classes. According to the manufacturer, the rules violation was a result of a production mistake.

The brand will be allowed to continue building the current model RC70LG throughout the remainder of the 2013 production equipment cycle. For the 2014 production equipment registration cycle, no new model registration will be accepted from the brand, however the current model (without any changes to shape and building parameters) may remain in production and sold and sailed also in the 2014 registration cycle.

The IKA technical committee has published a Q&A on acceptable production tolerances, and the 2014 builder contracts contain a full list of acceptable tolerances for boards registered for the 2014 season. These tolerance levels will be updated on the IKA website (Racing – Q&A section) with the beginning of the new equipment cycle after March 1st, 2014.

All builder provided measurement data will be published after the registration deadline for 2014 equipment to allow sailors to re-measurer their equipment themselves. However, manufacturers are advised to produce a measurement certificate for every board with the target and actual data.

It remains the sailor’s responsibility to ensure that his/her equipment is in compliance with the class rules (which require all equipment to be series production, with all pieces of equipment manufactured to the highest degree of uniformity in every performance related aspect).

Source: IKA – December 20, 2013