First you need to know just what a sport kite is to understand sport kite competition. Today’s sport kites are sometimes called stunt kites. In the most basic understanding of the sport kite the description is a kite that has two or more control lines used to do maneuvers in the sky. At some time or another you may have seen a sport kite doing strange things like bouncing around flying very low or even on the ground. This type of kite flying a lot of the time is intentional.

Sport Kites Come in Two Basic Types

You will hear it’s a dual-line kite! Meaning the kite has two control lines that give it the ability to do any number of tricks and complicated maneuvers in the sky. It takes a lot of practice to master the sport kite to do maneuvers like the axel, fade, lazy susan, comet, cascade, and a stall. Today’s modern stunt kites are delta-shaped similar to this:

With the more advanced multi-line kites you see as few as three control lines. The most common are quad-line kites meaning 4 control lines. The flight characteristics of the quad-line sport kites are very different than the dual-line stunt kites. You will see them flown backwards and forwards and they can be made to stop suddenly and hover. The quad-line employs two rigid handles with two control lines on each one. So what does the quad-line kite look like? You will see the quad-line kite in different shapes but the most common looks like a flat sail similar to these:

Very exciting to watch are trains which consists of what can be dual-line and multi-line kites linked together. These trains of 3 or more kites linked together are unable to the complicated maneuvers like single kites can but they are still a blast to watch.