3 questions to Robby Swift

31/01/2023

Behind the scenes of the merger between the PWA World Tour and the International Windsurfing Tour (see our article of January 11, 2023), Robby Swift knows the world wave tour better than anyone else, an old hand at the circuit for 20 years. Between consensus and sacrifices, he tells Windsurfjournal.com his feelings on this PWA IWT Unified Wave Tour!

Windsurfjournal.com: How did this connection between the PWA and the IWT come about, and how did you collaborate?
Robby Swift: We have had a strong connection between the IWT and PWA for many years. The Aloha Classic has been a joint event many times recently, and the idea to unite the two tours has been something that the sailors and organization of both tours have wanted to achieve for some time, too. In reality, both sides had to give a little bit to be able to met in the middle. The sailors on the PWA tour agreed to accept significantly lower standards in locations where we want to compete due to excellent conditions and the IWT already has events running in a few of the best windsurfing locations on the planet, so there was a natural agreement between the wishes of the sailors and the possibilities available to us between the PWA and the IWT. My part in behind the scenes was to try to come to a consensus with the sailors as to what we all actually wanted to achieve out of this, and then to find a way to try to bring the tour together with as much positive energy as possible. There were and still are many difficult issues, but the general feeling is that this is the right way to go, and we are all excited to compete in many locations around the world. Hopefully it will be the start of something great.

WJ: How do you feel about the calendar that was just unveiled a few days ago?
RS: My feeling about the new calendar is that I really hope it will be the step in the right direction that professional windsurfing needs to start to grow again. We now have a huge tour with events all over the world at different star ratings. I have already heard from several of my friends who are windsurfing enthusiasts around the world that they will do some local competitions this year as they are excited to get a world ranking. This has never been possible before. At the top end of the spectrum, we have obviously made some very big sacrifices in terms of standards at events, but this brings the costs to organizers of many of our events down more in line with kite and wing events which already had far less standards for the competitors, and hopefully it will be a worthwhile investment. Financially, this is going to make it really hard for the sailors who will travel to the events this year, but my hope is that it will allow us to attract sponsorship support from outside the industry and make the sport grow in this way. It is something that we have been reluctant to do as sailors for the past 15–20 years, but we have seen that it’s just not possible to get new events with the standards that we were used to in the past, so I really hope that this change and this big investment from the sailors will give the sport the boost that we need to start to grow back to the popularity that we saw 20 years ago.

WJ: You have known the world circuit for a long time, what do you think this union between the two circuits will bring?
RS: I hope that it will be the starting point for windsurfing to get back on the map as a serious, professional, extreme water sport. Wave sailing is so dramatic and impressive, and the images are awesome. The competition formats we have now and the presentation of the live stream with live scoring makes it fascinating to watch. I hope that this new worldwide, competitive scene will ignite interest from brands outside the industry so that windsurfing starts to regain some of the notoriety that it has lost over the past several years. I also hope that the addition of more wave riding events will give more people from different parts of the world a chance to fight for the world title and gain some of the recognition they deserve for their amazing skills!