Windsurf · Foil era
2019
The first foil world champions
Formula and IFCA crown their first foil world champions, and the PWA its first champion of a standalone foil tour, in the same season.
Foil
First foil world titles for Formula and IFCA, 2019
In 2019 foiling became a world championship discipline in its own right, in three places at once.
From 30 June to 6 July the first Formula Foil world championship was sailed at Puck in Poland. Steve Allen of Australia won by a single point. In August the IFCA held its first foil world championship on Lake Silvaplana in Switzerland, with 71 sailors on what the organisers called the biggest start line so far. Luuc van Opzeeland of the Netherlands and Anna Sagulenko of Ukraine became the first IFCA foil world champions.
The professional tour followed. The PWA had announced that from 2019 foil racing would no longer be tied to slalom events and would get the same prize money. In October Nicolas Goyard of France was crowned men’s PWA foil world champion, a year after Gonzalo Costa Hoevel of Argentina had become the first man to win the PWA foil title.
Five years later the Olympic windsurfers raced on foils too.