Windsurf · One design boom
1976
The Windglider, the board that became Olympic
Fred Ostermann's Windglider becomes an international class in 1979 and the first Olympic windsurfing board in 1984.
Windglider, 390 × 65 cm · outline and profile measured from a line drawing by Barbetorte (Wikimedia Commons)
In Germany in 1976 Fred Ostermann developed the Windglider. It was 3.9 metres long and 65 centimetres wide, with a 6.5 square-metre sail. Unlike some rivals, Ostermann’s company took a licence under the Windsurfer patent and paid its dues. In 1982 his company was taken over by the BiC group, which also owned Dufour.
In 1979 the International Yacht Racing Union gave international class status to two of the most popular one-design boards, the Windglider and the Windsurfer. One-design means that every board and rig is identical, so a race is decided by the sailors and not by their equipment.
That made the Windglider the natural choice when windsurfing was admitted to the Olympic Games. The federation had to choose the Olympic equipment by November 1980, and it chose the Windglider. At the 1984 Games in Los Angeles every competitor raced one. The boards were even swapped between sailors each day.