Due to the lockdown period and further impact of the worldwide pandemic, we had to postpione all our regular World Cup events to return in Fall this year.
Therefore we developed a new of its kind event concept to encourage our athletes, generate fresh content and offer a communication platform for riders, sponsors and media during this period of restrictions and limitations. Initially planned as a platform during the travel and event restricted period, but with the positive feedback on the concept by the industry and others, we decided to keep the format also after the pandemic as an additional competition next to our regular world cup events in the future.
The GKA Distance Battle is a video-based competition where you can compete from anywhere in the world. A selection of the best riders that qualify through the GKA World Tour ranking and a public voting will compete in solo heats at their home spots. Like in a usual competition you need to perform tricks during a 5 minute heat, that needs to be entirely filmed without any cut. Three trick categories are predefined by the GKA head judge plus one individual signature trick. These un-edited solo heat videos will be sent to GKA and edited for presentation of head-to-head heats with split screen, slow-motion replays and live scoring judged by the GKA Kite World Tour judges and presented in an online event format from a live studio in correspondence with the competing riders via video chat. The competition will be broadcasted in several episodes of about 1 hour each online live and on-demand on the website and social channels of the GKA and selected media partners.
It is like a world cup event with the top riders battling it out simultaneously, just spread across the world!
Please find the presentation of the GKA Distance Battle and the Race Notices below:
Event Time Table
16th July 14:00h CET – 17th July 14:00h CET: Online Voting for the wildcards
17th July: Publishing of final competitors list for the Distance Battle
18th July: Start of filming period and send out of judging/filming rules to the competitors
22th July: End of filming period, deadline for submitting the heat videos
31st August – 13th September: Broadcasting of the live event shows
