The International Kiteboarding Association (IKA) announced today, that following a decision of the IKA Executive Committee, the PKRA Freestyle Tour will exclusively lead towards the 2010 Freestyle World Title.

This is following discussions about a clear structure in world wide freestyle competition kiteboarding. Thus the PKRA tour is awarding the Freestyle World Championship Title in 2010, while the continental titles for Asia and Europe are awarded through the Asian and European Continental Tours.

The IKA freestyle world ranking system will still combine all world ranking events into one united ranking, including national, continental and world tour events. Competitors thus find a clear pathway from their local and national events up to the world tour stops.

“We ultimatively achieved our goal to unify the various freestyle rankings into a clear structure. The PKRA tour offers great venues, good organization and has undisputable the best riders. So the logical step was to award their tour the freestyle world title”, Richard Gowers from the British Kitesurfing Association and freshly elected chairman of the class, stated.

Executive Secretary Markus Schwendtner added, that “the plan was to bring all international competition together under one unified set of rules and judging guidelines, which we now already achieved in 2010. This season was a transition period, and 2010 will be great.”

Mauricio Toscano, PKRA tour manager, also commented on this. "The cooperation between PKRA and IKA has been a great success. Continuous exchange of ideas between the organizations and the implementation of them, has resulted in better structure of kiteboarding competitions worldwide. This could only lead to a better understanding and acceptance of the sport at the international level, and therefore a healthy development of the sport in years to come." he said.

The Asian Continental Tour is continuing with three more events in the first half-year 2010, while the details of the upcoming European Continental Tour are exepcted to be published in the next weeks.

The complete 2010 Point and Ranking System will be available during the next days on the class website together with further information.