Windsurf

A plywood platform with a hand-held, kite-like sail becomes the first publicly described sailboard, a year before it appears in Popular Science.

An aeronautical engineer and a businessman from his circle build a board with a free-swivelling rig in California; the first water trial is most often dated 21 May 1967.

A mast on a universal joint, a wishbone boom and a sail you steer with your hands; the patent that defines windsurfing is filed.

The first customer puts the board on the cover of the Seattle Times Sunday magazine, and the name that sticks is his, not the makers'.

Roto-moulded from polyethylene, the first industrially produced Windsurfer appears in March 1970.

A Dutch textile company signs the licence to build and sell Windsurfers in Europe; within three years Europe buys far more boards than America.

At Association Island, New York, the class crowns its first world champions, Matt Schweitzer and Beb Thijs.

A small group in Kailua, Oahu, starts rebuilding the Windsurfer for strong wind and waves; the harness comes first, footstraps and high-wind sails follow.

An importer, a plastics manufacturer and a designer set out to build a better board than the original, and start one of the sport's great brands.

At a record-sized Windsurfer World Championship in the Bahamas, with 456 competitors, a 13-year-old from Oahu takes the title.

Fred Ostermann's Windglider becomes an international class in 1979 and the first Olympic windsurfing board in 1984.

For the first time any board may race; European designs beat the ten-year-old Windsurfer, and brands begin to compete on technology.

The Kailua sailors add footstraps so they can stay on the board in wind and waves; their photographs turn Hawaii into the sport's promised land.

Windsurf boards are timed at the speed trials for the first time, and Derk Thijs sails a standard Windglider at 19.1 knots.

Two Americans claim clip-on hydrofoils that lift an ordinary windsurf board out of the water, an idea that would take decades to become the norm.

From Riga to Tbilisi sailors build their own boards from photographs, and in June 1979 four coaches in China launch a home-made board of their own.

Peter Brockhaus founds F2, whose funboards with footstraps help lead the market into the funboard years.

A decade after the first factory-made board, the IOC admits boardsailing to the Olympic Games without a single vote against.

In special speed trials at Maalaea Bay, Jaap van der Rest sails a Ten Cate Special at 24.63 knots.

In a case against the world's biggest board maker, an English court accepts Peter Chilvers' 1958 board as prior art; the patent that ruled the industry starts to crumble.

Fred Haywood becomes the first windsurfer to sail faster than 30 knots, as speed sailing turns into a contest of equipment.

From 574 boards in 1972 to about 400,000 a year in the mid-eighties. Then sales halve by 1993.

The manufacturers launch a professional World Cup; wind limits and spectacular images turn racing into a show, and the first women's titles follow in 1984.

Jeffrey Magnan's design for Gaastra couples the battens to the mast, so a race sail keeps its aerofoil shape instead of flapping into it.

MauiSails presents the rotating asymmetrical airfoil: battens that swing around the mast, so the sail takes a wing shape on each tack.

Off Long Beach, on the one-design Windglider, windsurfing becomes an Olympic discipline and the Netherlands takes the first gold.

Maui's north shore gets the contest that would crown wave sailing's champions for decades.

At Sotavento on Fuerteventura, Pascal Maka sails 38.86 knots and takes the outright sailing speed record from the catamaran Crossbow II.

At the 1986 speed event on Fuerteventura, Britt Dunkerbeck is timed at 33.77 knots.

Seventeen years after it was granted, the US patent of Schweitzer and Drake expires, and with it the licence fees.

At the Seoul Games, sailed off Busan, the windsurfers race the Division II; Bruce Kendall of New Zealand wins gold.

In a new speed canal at Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, Erik Beale becomes the first sailor to officially break 40 knots.

From 1988 to 1999 Björn Dunkerbeck wins the overall world title every year, twelve in a row, a record.

With no say in a tour run by the manufacturers, the professional windsurfers found their own association, the PBA.

In the speed canal at Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, Thierry Bielak sails faster than anyone had ever sailed.

At Barcelona men and women race separately for the first time, on the Lechner A-390; Barbara Kendall of New Zealand wins the first women's gold.

At Peʻahi on Maui's north shore, windsurfers sail one of the biggest waves in the world, before tow-in surfing makes it famous.

Babeth Coquelle is timed at 40.05 knots, five years after the first sailor of any kind broke 40.

At Atlanta, sailed off Savannah, the Mistral One Design becomes the Olympic board; Nikos Kaklamanakis and Lee Lai-Shan win gold.

After the riders' association PBA collapses under its debts, a new association runs the tour, now as the PWA World Tour.

In Brest the first Formula contest is sailed on short, wide boards with big sails; by 2001 it is an international class.

Björn Dunkerbeck wins the professional tour's first freestyle world title, a discipline judged on tricks rather than on speed or waves.

Short, very wide and extremely floaty, the Go planes early and forgives mistakes, and aims to bring beginners back to a sport that had grown too technical.

About a hundred windsurfers start the first Défi Wind; it grows into one of the biggest windsurfing events in the world.

Ricardo Campello wins three freestyle world titles from 2003; in 2006 Gollito Estredo takes the first of nine. Both sail from Isla Margarita.

Finian Maynard ends eleven years of Yellow Pages Endeavour; windsurfers then hold the outright sailing speed record until a kitesurfer takes it in 2008.

At the Beijing Games, sailed at Qingdao, the Neil Pryde RS:X replaces the Mistral; Tom Ashley and Yin Jian win gold.

Tomahawk Foils from Weymouth and the AFS-1 from Brittany present foils for windsurf boards, years before foiling takes over.

Van Rijsselberghe wins the RS:X at London 2012 and again at Rio 2016, the first to defend an Olympic windsurfing title.

In the dug channel at Lüderitz, Anders Bringdal becomes the first windsurfer over 50 knots; Antoine Albeau ends the season at 52.05.

In May the sailing federation votes to replace windsurfing with kiteboarding at the Rio 2016 Olympics; in November it reverses the decision.

In a machine-dug channel on the Namibian coast, the French champion sets a windsurfing speed record of 53.27 knots over 500 metres.

NeilPryde, maker of the Olympic board, unveils a foil board; by 2017 most major brands sell windsurf foils.

The Australian wave sailor becomes the first windsurfer to ride the giant waves of Nazaré in Portugal.

Formula and IFCA crown their first foil world champions, and the PWA its first champion of a standalone foil tour, in the same season.

At the Tokyo Games, sailed in 2021 off Enoshima, Kiran Badloe and Lu Yunxiu become the last Olympic champions of the RS:X.

Sarah Hauser windsurfs a 12.19-metre wave at Peʻahi, the largest wave ever windsurfed by a woman according to Guinness World Records.

At La Palme, Antoine Albeau sets a ratified windsurfing record over a nautical mile, a distance that tests endurance as much as speed.

Forty years after Long Beach, Olympic windsurfing is a foiling discipline; Tom Reuveny and Marta Maggetti win the first iQFoil golds in Marseille.

At Lüderitz, Jenna Gibson raises the women's windsurfing speed record to 48.02 knots and Antoine Albeau the men's to 53.49.

In 2025 Offringa is world champion in wave, freestyle and Slalom X, her 28th world title; in 2026 she adds a 29th.