Kite racing takes to the foil

Kite course racing, around buoys like a sailing regatta, had its own world championships by the early 2010s. In 2012 the siblings John and Erika Heineken won both titles at Cagliari in Italy; in 2013 the world championship went to Bo’ao in China.

At the same time the boards changed. Riders began to race on hydrofoils, a wing under the board that lifts it out of the water. The racer Nicolas Parlier switched to kitefoiling in 2011 and described a total explosion of the sport from 2013. The International Kiteboarding Association ran it in two forms: Formula Kite on 70 cm raceboards and, from 2013, a separate KiteFoil class for the foilers.

Formula Kite appeared as a class in the 2013–14 ISAF Sailing World Cup. At its final in Abu Dhabi in 2014 the 17-year-old Elena Kalinina won the women’s event. The same year the KiteFoil Gold Cup was launched to give the foilers an international tour; in 2015 it visited Mexico, the United States and Australia.

In 2016 Formula Kite itself became a foiling class, and it was later chosen as the class for kiteboarding’s Olympic debut at the Paris 2024 Games.