© Sergio Villalba
Kitesurfing has seen itself lately, as a great option for disabled people to push themselves into water sports and even be an inspiration to others. It can be a new challenge and a rewarding experience for kite Instructors to discover new techniques and new equipment to teach people with disabilities or injuries. IKO is also interested in the subject and is conducting a survey in which you are invited to take part.
Some passionate Instructors and kiters have made a step forward in adapting their equipment to be able to teach their students with disabilities, paraplegia for instance. The equipment used may include modified catamarans, SUP boards or special seats especially designed for people with physical disabilities. There are camps and clinics organized in different countries and organizations raising funds to be able to afford special equipment to promote the teaching and learning of kitesurfing to those people.
If you are a kitesurfing Instructor and have taught people with specific disabilities before, it would be interesting to hear about your experience as a teacher in order to encourage other schools or Instructors to do the same. Tell us about your training, ideas, equipment and techniques you used as well as your motivation for doing so. We can all learn by sharing our experiences. To make it easier for you, we have created a very short survey. We would appreciate if you could take a few minutes to answer the section reserved for ‘schools and instructors’ so that we can collect data and publish them later on in an article.
If you are a student who has learned kitesurfing despite your disability, we would also like to hear from you so that you can be an inspiration for other people who would like to try kitesurfing but are reluctant because of their disability. We ask you to complete the Members’ section of the survey which includes a few questions only.
