It’s a perfectly clear day at Crissy Field and the San Francisco bay glows a Mediterranean teal. Suddenly, dozens of huge kites — more like mini-parachutes — lift up in the sky. Just as many wetsuit-clad athletes run down the beach, surfboards in hand. Harnesses attach athlete to kite, and some smaller folks sprint with the kite to prevent lift-off. Once in the surf, everyone jumps on their boards and across the waves they sail.<\/p>\n
It’s kiteboarding, a once edgy and dangerous sport that’s gaining traction and credibility, largely due to the efforts of San Francisco locals. Tuesday kicked off the first ever Kiteboard Course Racing World Championship, a five-day competition drawing enthusiasts from all over the world\u00c2\u00a0 ..\u00c2\u00a0 Details & Pictures<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It’s a perfectly clear day at Crissy Field and the San Francisco bay glows a Mediterranean teal. Suddenly, dozens of huge kites — more like mini-parachutes — lift up in the sky. Just as many wetsuit-clad athletes run down the beach, surfboards in hand. Harnesses attach athlete to kite, and some smaller folks sprint with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,33],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17938","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-board-sports","category-kiteboard"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stokednews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17938","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stokednews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stokednews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stokednews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stokednews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17938"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.stokednews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17938\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17939,"href":"http:\/\/www.stokednews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17938\/revisions\/17939"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stokednews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17938"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stokednews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17938"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stokednews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17938"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}