Dear Friends We hope you are all safe and well. Further to the recent calendar updates、 we wanted to make you aware of some other changes that will impact future events. Production equipment rules for slalom are always a major talking point and the sport has been evolving at an incredible rate in recent years. We know that both the brands and the riders need long lead times in order to fully test、 develop、 tune and train on the equipment they will race on and、 as such、 all decisions about equipment limits have to be made well in advance. This requires us to make educated predictions about future evolutions – something that has not been helped by the lack of experience of events due to the pandemic、 but the PWA Management Board met recently to discuss the situation in order for us to provide you with good advanced notice of future intentions. The rules for 2023 have already been published and these will not change. We know how important it is for these rules to remain consistent once announced for the reasons mentioned above、 so for 2023、 we will stick with the 6 sails and 3 boards rule as previously published. For 2024 though、 we will be making some much more significant changes to the limits、 changes designed to reduce costs for brands and riders、 to reduce equipment loads required at events and to make racing more accessible to new and upcoming sailors looking to join the tour. The new rules will see limits reduced to 4 sails、 and 2 boards. Sails can be any sails from the PWA registered sails list、 and boards may be any 2 boards from the PWA registered slalom boards list. The maximum sail size will also be reduced to 9m2 for 2024. Foil registration rules will remain the same with 3 front wings and 2 back wings. Although this may seem like a fairly major departure from the current limits、 we are talking about rules that will not come into effect on the race course for about 2 years、 giving plenty of time for development and testing、 and we believe that this will be well in line with the predicted evolutionary curve that we are on. We will have more updates for you in the near future about other changes to PWA event standards、 designed to make events far easier to put on、 and also the registration process for boards、 sails and foils for future years、 but we have summarised the rules for you below for simplicity.
2022 6 Sails 4 Boards (only 1 over 85cm wide、 up to 91cm for men and 100.5cm for women) 1 Foil Set (3 front、 2 rear wings)
2023 6 Sails 3 Boards (only 1 over 85cm wide、 up to 91cm for men and 100.5cm for women) 1 Foil Set (3 front、 2 rear wings)
2024 4 Sails 2 Boards (any registered slalom boards、 foil or fin、 up to 91cm for men and 100.5cm for women) 1 Foil Set (3 front、 2 rear wings) We look forward to seeing you on the water soon. Kind regards The PWA
