Sport & Water – Kitesurfing - Austria / II. Republic of Austria 2018 - 80 Euro Cent

Gliding with the wind A new series of special issues from Austrian Post is being dedicated to sport. The focus is on less well-known sports and the stamps will be issued in themed sets. The theme for the first stamps is water sports. For many hundreds of years, sailing ships were the only means of transport for crossing the seas. Sometimes ships were also fitted with rudders to enable them to advance during lulls. Large sailing ships travelled the seas of the world both as battleships and as merchant vessels. Nowadays sailing is primarily a popular leisure activity and a spectacular competitive sport. In sailing there are many different classes of boat with different hull constructions, masts and sails, from the small optimist dinghy - often the entry vessel into the sport for children - up to the large sailing yachts with cabins, which are more often used for leisure purposes. Austria has produced many successful sailors: for example, the tornado yachtsmen Roman Hagara and Hans-Peter Steinacher enjoyed outstanding success, winning gold medals at the Summer Olympics in both 2000 in Sydney and 2004 in Athens. The tornado is a catamaran with two hulls, which is able to reach top speeds of over 30 knots. Tanja Frank and Thomas Zajac won bronze in the Nacra 17 class at the Summer Olympics in 2016. Water sports on stamps The special issue stamps for the new series will be presented at ÖVEBRIA 2018 in Klagenfurt, where the topic of water sports is particularly fitting since they naturally play a significant role on the Wörthersee. The powerful, dynamic images of the sport, created using a mixture of photography and graphic illustration, really come into their own on the - for water-related topics atypical - blue-violet background. By contrast, the colour in the right-hand section is bright and eye-catching, making it easy to differentiate between the different denominations as well as making them instantly recognisable. The elegant gold colour of the sailing stamp symbolises the major successes of the “golden” sailors Steinacher and Hagara.