Kite · Take-off
2003
The first Queen of the Air
Susi Mai wins the first women's big-air title on Maui and keeps it for three years in a row.
Hoʻokipa, Maui · Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL)
The King of the Air had been running on Maui since 1999, with its finals at Hoʻokipa, a contest about one thing: jumping higher and more spectacularly than anyone else. In 2003 it got a women’s title as well, the Queen of the Air.
Susi Mai won it. She was 19 and was competing on the KPWT world tour. She won again in 2004 and in 2005, the last years the contest was held on Maui.
Her run of three titles made her the face of women’s big air in the sport’s early years. After 2005 the King of the Air stopped. When it returned in 2013, now in Cape Town, it had no women’s title. A women’s division was introduced only in 2024, more than twenty years after Mai’s first title.