Kite · Take-off
2001
The riders take over the tour
Kiters vote to form their own professional association, the PKRA, and a new organisation starts building a network of schools and instructors.
PKRA
Professional Kiteboard Riders Association, formed by a riders' vote in 2001
Three years after the first world championship on Maui, kiting had a professional circuit. In 2000 the tour became the Kiteboard Pro World Tour (KPWT), with wave riding and freestyle.
The riders were not happy with how things were run. After trouble with a world tour organised by people who did not kite themselves, they voted in 2001 to form their own body, the Professional Kiteboard Riders Association (PKRA). Based in Barcelona, it went on to run a yearly world tour for well over a decade, with freestyle, wave, slalom, speed and course racing. In 2009 it joined the International Kiteboarding Association, part of the world sailing federation. For years the PKRA and the KPWT ran side by side, each crowning its own world champions.
The same year the International Kiteboarding Organization (IKO) was launched to build a network of schools and certified instructors. Its stated mission is to grow kiteboarding safely and sustainably.
Sources differ on the start: one lists the PKRA as organiser of the tour from 2000, another has the association formed only in 2001.