- First model year
- 2002
- Shape
- C-kite — direct, committed, no bridle to hide behind
- The 2009 model
- First Slingshot kite drawn around a single rider
- That rider
- Ruben Lenten, roughly a decade on the brand to 2013
Why keep a C-kite in the range at all?
Because some riders were never going to trade the feel away, and because a shape with nothing hiding it is a good test bench.
By the late 2000s the market had moved. Bridled shapes were easier to sell, easier to learn on and easier to relaunch, and every year there was a good argument for letting the C go. The counter-argument was a small number of people doing things at the top of the wind range where directness is not a preference, it is the safety margin.
What changes when the brief comes from one rider?
The failure mode changes. A model drawn for a range of riders is optimised around the middle of a distribution; a model drawn around one rider is optimised around the far end of it, where the loads are the ones that break things.
| Kite drawn for a market | The 2009 Fuel | |
|---|---|---|
| Brief | The range of riders who will buy it | What one rider was already doing to it |
| Conditions it is judged in | The everyday middle | The top of the wind range |
| What "good" means | Nothing goes wrong for most people | Nothing goes wrong at the worst load |
| The risk | Nobody's favourite | Too specialised to sell |
| What it gives back | Volume | A load case the whole range benefits from |
That last row is the reason to do it. A construction that survives a megaloop landing in storm wind is a construction the rest of the line inherits, and the rider gets a kite that fits instead of a kite that copes.
It is also a decade-long argument against the idea that a model has to be replaced every year to stay current. The Fuel was refined rather than reinvented, and the riders who wanted it wanted the same thing each season — which is a different relationship with a product than the one a marketing calendar assumes.
What is careful about this story?
Two things, and this series would rather say them than get caught on them.
The first is what came before the Fuel connection. Ruben won the Red Bull King of the Air in 2005 and finished second overall on the PKRA freestyle tour the same year — both real, both dated. Which brand's gear he was on for that win is asserted by shops and repeated widely, and it is not in any primary source we could find. So the results are printed and the equipment is not.
The second is what came after. He left for another brand in 2013, and his King of the Air podiums in 2014 and 2017 are that brand's, not this one's. A record that helps itself to a rider's whole career because it employed him for part of it is not a record.
Hood Memory Lane is what got built in Hood River before OXZA, in the past tense, because that is where it happened. The dated version is on Tony's timeline, the six patents behind these shapes are covered in the split strut and the one-pump manifold, and the current work is the REVSTAR system.
Questions
When did the Slingshot Fuel first appear?
2002. Reviews of the 2002 model exist and the 2003 is described in contemporary coverage as a refinement of it. The Fuel stayed in the line for more than a decade after that, which for a kite model is unusual.
What does it mean that a kite was designed around one rider?
It means the brief came from what that rider was doing rather than from what the market was asking for. The 2009 Fuel was the first Slingshot kite drawn that way, around Ruben Lenten, and he had already been riding the model for several seasons by then.
What is a megaloop?
A kiteloop thrown at height in strong wind — the rider jumps, then steers the kite through a full circle while still in the air, taking the load of it on the way down. It is the move Ruben Lenten is most associated with, and it is a durability question as much as a skill one.
#fuel #riders #bigair #hoodmemorylane #designhistory
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