Features

Tangled Lines Legends: Florian Gruber

Hailing from Bavaria, Germany, Florian Gruber can be found honing his foil skills on the lakes there. He is very competitive and has been part of the racing scene since the beginning, placing on the podium numerous times both on the water and at snowkite events. He is hoping to qualify for next year’s Olympics and thus end his racing career on a high!

The Mission: Hold Your Nerve

Leo Verrecchia tells us what it takes to remain calm and composed when competing in your first ever international competition. His experience at the GKA Freestyle Kite World Cup in Brazil, where he got through to the quarterfinals – an impressive achievement when you’re going up against some of the best in the business – helped him go on to win the Freestyle Nationals in his home country of Australia in January.

The Mission: Olympic Ticket

Roderick Pijls is a talented freestyle and wave rider, but less than two years ago added racing to his repertoire. He tells us how he got into the discipline and is striving to reach the Olympics. Luckily he’s joined forces with his sponsor Appletree to work on developing the best boards possible…

Tight Lines

Last issue we heard from Kari Schibevaag who flew to the archipelago of Svalbard – the last stop before the North Pole – for a quick snowkite trip and polar bear avoidance. This time she also heads north but staying on mainland Norway, for a longer trip on the Finnmark Plateau, something she’s dreamed about crossing with skis and a sled for a long time.

Tested and True (AND A BIT TIRED)

If you fancy chucking in your job and finding employment in the kite industry, read on to find out more about a year in the life of a kite pro turned product tester, Brandon Scheid. The fringe benefits? A lot of travel – Brandon’s 2022 included trips to Maui, Chile and Fiji, as well as testing and snowkiting in his home spot of Hood River. Any negatives to the job? Your knees might not thank you…

Splash Down

Alina Kornelli, who loves to dabble in all kite disciplines and nowadays wingfoiling too, has her eyes set firmly on the 2024 Olympics. Her competition schedule saw her take part in the Formula Kite World Championships in Sardinia last year, after which she stayed on to road trip the beautiful Italian island and do a photoshoot. Did she manage to score the specific shot photographer Lukas Stiller had in mind though…?

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A League of Their Own

The women of Big Air undeniably stole the show at Big Air Kite League’s latest competition in Cape Town. 12 serious, driven, and dedicated women traded in traditional kiting gender norms of bikinis and smiles for wetsuits, impact vests, and serious game faces. The crowd who came to see them compete was rewarded with women hucking their biggest and most aggressive tricks to date in properly windy Big Air conditions. No one held back. The women threw down massive tricks indistinguishable from the men, including not one but two queens attempting and landing the world’s first double loops for their division. After working individually and as a group for years to raise their collective skill level, the progression from women on this extreme side of kiting is undeniable. They train hard and kite harder to continue to push the ceiling higher for each other. And they don’t come to play…

Sultans of Wind

F-ONE team riders Francesca Maini, Hendrick Lopes, Marcela Witt, Maxime Chabloz, Mitu Monteiro and Paul Serin headed to Oman for an epic adventure in the Arabian desert. They put on a good show for the locals, found some camels of course, and assembled a short film of their escapades, Sultans of Wind, that you can catch on YouTube.

House Party

Photographer Andre Magarao doesn’t just hang out behind the lens when snapping pro kiters like Gianmaria Coccoluto, Noè Font, Ewan Jaspan, Kiko Roig Torres and Ramiro Gallart in Brazil. He ends up hanging out with them too and becoming firm friends. At the end of last year they shared a house in the freestyle paradise of Taiba. Andre talked us through the trip…