Thanks Jani.
The Indiana Big Chief was the first board on which I learned to pump back in '99 (before then we used to do tic-tac races) so it is interesting to see product development from the company that introduced me to the sport.
Although I started on an Indiana, I found the Big Chief to be both too twisting and narrow and far too flexible for accurate conework. As a street board however, it was fast and comfortable.
Indiana has always had a Race Team to showcase product, yet the range does not appear to have changed from the cruiser/ street line-up that was offered at the time of my initial purchase. Where the product on their site was thin and flexible, the deck raced by Luca was a solid slab of oak.
The latest deck seems to have a little more width, a longer tail and a little less camber (the latter suggesting that the board must be stiffer than typical in order to give up the same rebound). Yet it is still narrow enough to accept very narrow gauge trucks which means that it might be a good deck for Tight Slalom, wheelbase permitting.
If you look at a manufacturer such as Fibreflex, the race decks picked up the results, were seen by all and yet were impossible to come by. Instead people turned to other constructors in order to be able to race on a competitive board within the same year.
Indiana were running these decks as early as the Paris World Cup in May (if not before), so it would be a good marketing coup to seal their fine results with product availability, given that the race boards appears to have been fully developed. Equally, it would be a shame to cast aside the very good groundwork and miss the sales opportunity so provided.
Is there then, a projected release date for this product?
The cruiser decks are available in the UK through importers Octane Sport who distribute to retail outlets such as
www.smallplanetsurfshop.com in Hove.