The Birth of MauiRaceSeries.com

During the course of this summer’s Maui Race Series I’ve gotten a lot of feedback from the local slalom racers expressing frustration about the lack of information available online for the race series. The Maui Race Series has been going for something like 26 years. It’s the longest running windsurfing race still going. It brings in some of the top ranked pros, competing with hard core slalom fanatics and provides a great venue for up and coming racers to hone their racing skills against a very experienced fleet. Yet it flounders in obscurity. Well, I’ve decided to try to do something about that. If the race organizers and sponsors don’t want to put in a little effort to promote and disseminate information about the race series, I will.

I’ve got a lot of posts, photos and video here on this website about the race series, but what it really needs is its own website. I was approached by Dick Ashenfelter, a local slalom racer, about doing a website for the race series. I offered to donate some time to set up a WordPress website for the race series if the official organizers would just pitch in some content. Well, we never heard anything back from the official organizers, so I went out and grabbed the domain name anyway. In my opinion, they’re missing an opportunity. Maui may be best known for its wave sailing but there is a hard core slalom racing crowd here and there is a demand for a slalom racing focused website where they can go for information. So, MauiRaceSeries.com will be that resource for them.

MauiRaceSeries.com site under development

So, my wife Karen and I are currently developing the website. Karen is taking the lead on the development of this. Check it out as it’s being developed.  It’s still a work in progress but the plan is to provide racing information like where and how to sign up for next year’s 2011 Maui Race Series, a result sections, photos, video, perhaps some articles on tactics and training tips from some top slalom talent.  A lot of top ranked slalom racers make Maui their home, like Matt and Kevin Pritchard, Peter Biejl, Phil McGain, Peter Slate, Micah Buzianis. Some tech and tactics from some of these guys would be pretty cool.

Now, neither of us is a slalom racer so we’re also going to be looking for some slalom racers to help contribute by writing blog posts for the site. We’ll likely call this “The Virtual Guardrail,” a reference to the fact that the guardrail in the Uppers Kanaha parking lot is the de facto hang out spot for the slalom crowd between sessions. So, hopefully this will be the go-to spot to get information about race schedules, see race results, see photos and video of races and also get some good information about slalom racing in general. We’ll of course put sponsor logos and links to them on the site and I’ll probably put some slalom racing schwag like t-shirts and calendars there as well. If you’re a slalom fan and would like to contribute, drop me a line or comment and we’ll see about hooking you up to do some writing for some blogs. If you’ve got ideas about anything else you’d like to see, let us know.

2010 Maui Race Series Results

Here’s what I have so far for results from this year’s Maui Race Series:

June 19 – Dakine Classic

July 3 – Maui Fin Company Open

July 17 – Quiksilver Cup

Thanks to Harry Wiewel for supplying those.

2011  Maui Slalom Calendar

2011 Maui Slalom Calendar Coming in September

As I mentioned, I’ll be doing a slalom version of my annual Maui Windsurfing Calendar. Still picking out some of the photos for that, but if you’re a hard core slalom fan, look for the calendar to be available some time in September. It won’t have next year’s race schedule on it, just slalom action photos from this year’s race series.