Survey Results

What's the most popular brand of ski in the world?  Where are the surfski.info readers from?  How often do you paddle?  The answers are revealed here - in the results of the 2008 Surfski.info Survey...

During the month of May we ran our first ever survey and had no fewer than 417 responses - a response rate of around 30% (of the readers who read the article announcing the survey).  Many thanks to all those who took the time to do so.

The results may be seen here.

Statistical Significance - or how representative are these figures?

417 is pretty good statistical sample - of our readers.  My opinion is that our readership is fairly representative of the surf ski paddler world, so the figures probably reflect fairly accurately the trends in surf ski paddling worldwide.  Any statisticians out there care to comment?

Demographics - or where are you from?

We had respondents from 29 countries, but the most interesting thing was that Australia was the second largest group after the USA - perhaps reflecting the growth of long distance paddling that has been reported there?

Where are the Women?

We all know that women form a minority of paddlers - but only 4%?!  In a couple of recent interviews, women have expressed the opinion that part of the reason there aren't more female surf ski paddlers is that there are no skis light enough and small enough for them.  Seems to me that here's a market waiting to be filled - manufacturers, on your marks, get set, go!

Paddle ‘til you drop

Oscar still heads the World Rankings at 45 - but here's confirmation that that age is no blocker to paddling - Eighty six percent of our respondents are 30+; over half are 40+.  No wonder the vets category is competitive!

Manufacturers

Here's another interesting one.  Apologies to the manufacturers I left out of the list, but you were counted in the "other" category.  We were able to filter by country to see which manufacturers dominate in which regions.  The results are:

South Africa (60 respondents)

USA (126 respondents)

Australia (119 respondents)

Activity

Perhaps not surprisingly, our respondents are very keen paddlers: nearly 80% paddle several times a week or more - and about 85% race at least occasionally. 

What you like

These results confirmed what we thought - the race reports both live and post-event are most popular, along with equipment reviews.  But what really struck home was that readers are crying out for more photos and video clips. 

We'll be working to bring you more of these in the future.

World Series

Most of you are aware of the World Series; most of you have at least an idea of how it works and most of you care.  (Phew - we're on the right track!)

However, most of you are not on the rankings.  We've had a number of complaints too from people who feel that coming 51st at Molokai is much more of an achievement than coming 30th at one of the smaller races - the guy who came 30th is on the rankings; the guy who came 51st is not.  So, in the new season, we're going to change the rules so that everyone who participates in a World Series race will get onto the rankings.  And the guy who comes 51st in a race with 300 paddlers will get more points than the guy who comes 51st in a race with 51 paddlers!  Watch this space.

Constructor's Championship

By far the majority of readers are keen on a Constructor's Championship.  We're working on rules for this for the new season.  We're hoping that it will stimulate interest in sponsorship of paddlers by the various brands - which can only help the sport.

We had some comments to the effect that a constructor's championship would prejudice the smaller manufacturers but we don't think this is the case.  On the contrary, if a smaller manufacturer manages to get a top paddler to compete on their ski and perform, it'll actually help them to stand out far more than one of the big brands who you'd expect to be at the top anyway.

Our belief is that anything that stimulates interest and discussion can only benefit everyone in the sport, paddlers and manufacturers alike.

What we do need to do however is find a set of rules for the constructor's championship that enables the smaller manufacturers be represented.  Again, watch this space...!

World Series Suggestions

Suffice to say that there were many excellent comments and suggestions on the World Series.  A dominant theme was the current exclusivity - which we're addressing by involving every World Series race participant in the rankings.

We had almost as many people saying we should have fewer World Series races as there were people saying we should have more!  We believe that we're addressing most of the requests by:

• The star rating that tries to identify the most important races
• Limiting the number of races to count - so a paddler should only have to race in some of the top races in order to feature in the rankings
• Increasing the number of races a) to make it easier to attend WS races and b) to make it more inclusive of paddlers around the world.

But we are going through the suggestions carefully and will be identifying and implementing the most important trends.

Thanks!

Alain and I would like to thank once more everyone who took the trouble to fill the survey in.  The exercise was extremely useful and we'll be repeating it in the near future - this time to ask for your suggestions on how to make the site commercially viable.