Sometimes, it feels like he’s almost unbeatable on his foil board. He proved it last week at the open European championships in Los Alcázares, Spain, again, being hunted by the rest of the field, but never got caught. There, in the great saltwater lagoon of Mar Menor, a young kite foiler completed a wonderful trilogy: after the world title in 2023 and the gold medal at the postponed Asian Games in 2023, he now became European champion: Max Maeder, Singaporean mother and Swiss father, rules the waves in kite foiling. And he is only 17 years old.

“Seventeen is quite a young age in my sport, but it is going great”, he says calmly. “I made no big mistakes in Mar Menor. It was a wonderful couple of days.” Kite foiling makes it’s Olympic debut in Paris 2024, the athletes will compete near Marseille, in the south of France, in the Mediterranean Sea. It’s a fast sport, where the riders are being lifted out of the water hanging beneath a huge kite. Because of the board with a hydrofoil, they glide above the water, sometimes developing speeds up to 70 km per hour.
Different beast
“I like that speed”, says Maeder. “Trying to figure out how to go fast and keeping track. I didn’t compete in other types of kite foiling like some of the other, older, competitors did. I started in 2017 (when Maeder was 11, 12 years old!, DtG), trying to become better and faster. As a really young kid, I did start with kite boarding, but essentially that feels like a completely different sport. What I’m riding now is another machine, this is a whole different beast.”

A lot of athletes changed their discipline in foiling after it was decided that the coruse racing format was going to be the Olympic one. Like Roderick Pijls, a 31-year-old Dutchman, who ended up in the bronze fleet in Spain. At the time of Olympic recognition, about three years ago, he was active in freestyle (tricks in the air) and wave (surfing on the waves).
“I didn’t have that immediate desire to switch to the Olympic component. It was in a covid year. There were no competitions and I was basically just lying on the beach waiting for the wind when national coach Casper Bouman asked if I wanted to go racing.” For the supersonic racing class, the first breath of wind is often sufficient.
It has to do with the specialist, light material the kites and foil boards are made of. “You are lifted out of the water and you start to float. It is not feasible for ‘normal’ kite surfers. It’s like giving a driver a Formula 1 car on a public road and saying: ‘Here you go, go drive.’” It is not without reason that the class is also called the Formula Kite.
Max
That’s why the comparison between the Max on the asphalt (Verstappen) and the Max on the water is quickly made. Maeder is well on his way being dominant in his sport. His secret? “I haven’t got any, to be honest,” he says modestly. “It has to do with mindset, tactical thinking and having a bit of talent… And just hard work and training.”

“In a training block you’ll find me on the water for two to three hours, six days a week. And then add the running training and the hours in the gym to that. Of course, I’m still young, so I did have to create muscle mass compared to my older opponents.”
Another important part of being better than the rest is the preparation of the material. Pijls explains he needed to get used to that part of the game. “With freestyling, I was done once I left the water. I threw my stuff in the corner and started doing other things. That’s really not the case at all in course racing. Now I have to decide with which grit I should sand my foil at what temperature to make small grooves in it so that the water sticks to it. And then I write that down in my journal. I’m analyzing, I’m drawing the routes. In the beginning I didn’t feel like doing that kind of ‘nerdy’ stuff at all. Until I noticed that others benefit from it. Better preparation really ensures better results.”
Olympic Games
Maeder already has those results. He races for Singapore and will be a favorite for the medals at the Olympic Games. “Of course I’m looking forward to that. It’s great for us kite foilers to have an Olympic status. The sport deserves it,” says Maeder like a true ambassador. He still has to receive an official decision regarding his participation in Paris 2024, though. “I’ve got a country ticket for Singapore, no ticket in name yet… But I don’t know any other kite foiler from Singapore at this level, so I guess that’ll be fine…”