9/27/2023 0 Comments Kite fighting rooftop teams![]() "There are two basic approaches to kite fighting," Govig explains. "When it's pointing in the direction you want it to go, pull the string," he demonstrates, swooping, his kite toward Kinnaird's, which deftly evades the string's cutting edge. They can't just sit in the air - they tip this way and that. ![]() India fighter kites, he explains, are highly maneuverable because they're built to be unstable. "You can't psych your opponent out if he can't hear you," say Govig. That's why kite gladiators have to confine themselves to a 30-yard circle. The psyching out, according to Govig, is just as important as the flying technique. "He's going to win by annihilation - he's attacking me!" accuses Kinnaird, but Govig explains that the so-called attack, like the Japanese garb, is just one more way to psych out the opponent. Govig's kite, meanwhile, dances menacingly just above Kinnaird's head. "When you slack the line, the kite spins and then you can make it go in any direction," explains Kinnaird, making his kite turn cartwheels in the sky. Mel Govig, demonstrating the art of kite fighting and defending his title on the beach at Sandy Point, uses an India fighter kite made in Portland, Oregon.He lends an identical kite to the challenger, Richard Kinnaird, whom he refers to with friendly disparagement as "the young pretender." "It's beginning to catch on over here, in Americanized versions." Everyone gets up on the rooftops of houses with picnics lunches and cuts everybody else's kites," says Valerie Govig, who is the editor of Kitelines magazine, as well as the champion's wife. "In Ahmedabad, in India, there's the festival of Utran. Today, the weapons are the kites themselves or, more commonly, their string, which is impreginated with ground glass or grit. More than 2,000 years ago a military tactician named Kungshu Phan built giant kites that carried archers over the besieged city of Sung. Kites, according to Chinese lore, began as military equipment. Instead of the pastoral image of kites floating peacefully on the spring breeze, Govig, dressed for the kite-dueling ritual in a Japanese volunteer fireman's coat, conjures up visions of ancient Asian gladiators and their warring kites. That kind of kite flying is a comtemplative sport - like pipe smoking, or fishing," says Mel Govig, a seemingly mild-mannered bindery supervisor who doubles as kite-dueling champion of the Mid-Atlantic states. Kites that just sit in the air don't excite me anymore.
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