{"id":10170,"date":"2017-02-16T17:17:00","date_gmt":"2017-02-16T17:17:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/associatednews.us\/content\/2017\/02\/16\/recipe-for-new-sports-just-add-a-drone\/"},"modified":"2017-02-16T17:17:00","modified_gmt":"2017-02-16T17:17:00","slug":"recipe-for-new-sports-just-add-a-drone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/associatednews.us\/content\/recipe-for-new-sports-just-add-a-drone\/","title":{"rendered":"Recipe For New Sports? Just Add A Drone"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Cecilia Mazanec<\/a><\/span> <\/p>\n

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\n Snowboarders are pulled by a drone on a lake near Cesis, Latvia, in January.<\/p>\n

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Ilmars Znotins\/AFP\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

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Ilmars Znotins\/AFP\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

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You may have heard of drone racing<\/a>, but people keep coming up with new ways to enjoy these flying machines.<\/p>\n

One of the latest twists on drone sports comes from Latvia.<\/p>\n

A company called Aerones<\/a> has developed a drone to use for droneboarding, a new sport that’s just what it sounds like \u2014 a snowboarder being pulled through the snow by a powerful drone.<\/p>\n

When the company first tried droneboarding last year, as a way to test the strength of its drones, the sport didn’t even have its name. “We didn’t call it like that in the beginning, but somebody, somewhere said droneboarding, and that’s how it took off,” Aerones CEO Janis Putrams says.<\/p>\n

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The company posted a video online, which Putrams says had 5 million views in the first couple of weeks.<\/p>\n

He says the company wanted to use drones to wakeboard<\/a> as well, so it built a larger, more powerful drone capable of lifting 145 kilograms (about 320 pounds).<\/p>\n

So when the AFP news agency<\/a> approached Aerones about a year later and asked to do a story on the sport, the company decided to go big \u2014 four times bigger.<\/p>\n

“When we do this kind of a test, we want to do something new \u2014 something that we haven’t done before,” Putrams says. “So we thought, ‘Well, the drone is four times bigger than last time, so let’s try four snowboarders.’ “<\/p>\n

AFP and Aerones released videos of the feat.<\/p>\n

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Latvian engineers have developed a giant drone able to tow snowboarders and lift people pic.twitter.com\/1YlE5iR2G7<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2014 AFP news agency (@AFP) January 23, 2017<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n

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Putrams helped to pilot the drone using remote controls, but he said the professional snowboarders who were towed were very excited about the way it felt.<\/p>\n

Article continues after sponsorship<\/a><\/span><\/div>\n