Welcome to Our Backyard

I have been thinking about how to write this since the team left.

This August we did something we have never done before. For the first time in Slingshot's history, we brought the entire team together in Hood River, Oregon. Not just the A-team. Not just the kite crew or the foil crew. Everyone. Jeremy Burlando, Zac Adams, and Kimo Verkerk flew in from around the world. Edo Tanas and Trent Carter arrived still carrying the momentum from Hawaii. Dave Scott made the trip from Florida. Wyatt Duce, Torin Berg, and Michaela Pilkenton, who already call the Columbia River Gorge home, were waiting when everyone arrived.

For a stretch of days in August, Hood River belonged to all of them at once. That had never happened before.

These riders come from completely different disciplines. Trent and Edo live and breathe downwind foil racing. Jeremy, Zac, and Kimo are pushing the limits of New School Big Air kiteboarding. Their worlds do not naturally intersect. Put them in the same place with wind and water and you find out something quickly. They have more to say to each other than anyone expected. A kite athlete and a foil athlete talking about what they feel on the water, what their gear needs to do, where the sport is going. Both of them leaning in.

That is the thing about having multiple riders on the water in a place like the Gorge. You cannot replicate it in a design meeting or staring at a screen. Real testing happens on the water. Real feedback happens when the best riders in the world are putting gear through its paces together, comparing notes in real time, pushing each other further. What takes months in isolation takes days when the right people are in the right place.

At Slingshot we genuinely believe the best product comes from the people riding it. Not a spec sheet. From Edo telling us exactly what he felt in a race. From Jeremy loading the kite during a loop and coming back with something specific. We do not hand athletes gear and ask them to promote it. We design alongside them. When you build product with the best athletes in the world, that is when real innovation happens.

Kiteboarding and foiling all together in Hood River gave us the conditions and the time to do exactly that. Sessions every day, conversations every night, and a team that came together from opposite ends of the world and found out they were all pointing in the same direction.

This is what it looks like when a brand cares about its athletes and the sports we all love. We are proud of what this team is building.

Welcome to our backyard.

- Elliott Tauscher