This far into the 21st-century, sports don’t need overwhelming global or national popularity to take part in the technological crusade that has revolutionized entertainment and activity as we know it. Most recently, this acknowledgement has given kiteboarding — which essentially combines wakeboarding, windsurfing, and a few other sports — the opportunity to technologically enhance the experience that it provides to its participants. By partnering with an innovative wearable company, North Kiteboarding has ensured that kiteboarders everywhere will have access to metrics that are as advanced as their talents.
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The wearable that North Kiteboarding is teaming up with is called PIQ, which is a “multi-sport sensor… [that] can track performance metrics of various sports.” When hooked up to a North Kiteboard, PIQ provides its user with a plethora of performance measurements, including but not limited to “height of jumps, air time, G force at landing, [and] number of jumps.” Much like the Intel Curie Module did for the X Games or the BRAIN One does for all kinds of extreme sports, the PIQ is going to streamline the collection and analysis of advanced data and give kiteboarders resources they’ve never had before.
Be ready to live a connected experience on the waves with @northkites and PIQ! https://t.co/4mACgx1jTU #northandpiq pic.twitter.com/QCZDQq0cDe
— PIQ (@PIQLive) May 31, 2016
The PIQ does significantly more than just gather data, though, and its full array of features can be seen in the video below that was released with the announcement of the PIQ-North Kiteboarding partnership.
One of the more unique elements that kiteboarders will have access to after coupling their board with a PIQ device is the ability to see, real-time, how high they are in the air — a kiteboarder’s height is displayed directly on the PIQ device itself. On top of that, PIQ users will be able to engage in something called the “PIQ community,” which allows athletes with a PIQ and North Kiteboard to compete against each other, either in head-to-head competition or via leaderboards.
Teaming up with North Kiteboarding isn’t PIQ’s first foray into the world of sports. Last September, PIQ and Babolat created a tennis wearable. Three months after that, PIQ coupled with Rossignol to do, for all intents and purposes, the exact same thing that it’s doing with North Kiteboarding.
Kiteboarders know, though, that even with the PIQ making data especially accessible for them, there have always been avenues to make kiteboarding a technologically-stimulated sport. For instance, a kiteboarder can wear a Polar V800 around their wrist and attach a GoPro to their head to gather plenty of information about their activities. But that doesn’t take away from the fact that the marriage between the PIQ and North Kiteboarding is unlike any other development the kiteboarding world has experienced, in the sense that it is meant for kiteboarding. Welcome to the future, kiteboarding.