Who has not yet the new edition is to blame. This is my preface to the new era in SUP and water sports:
Dear readers,
When you hold this Stand Up Magazine in your hands, you are part of the beginning of a new era in water sports. After ten years of Stand Up Magazine, the pioneering spirit in me is spreading again. I started covering the sport of SUP in the spring of 2010, back then it was less about the lifestyle that SUP brings and more about explaining the sport to people. A year later the print magazine came along with the lifestyle. Everything was new, the masses didn’t know SUP yet and there were no controversies about associations. We experienced ten years of newfound water sports enthusiasm and brought thousands of people out on the water. Now SUP has reached a point where we can almost grasp the Olympics and SUP has also established itself in a broader stratum. The interest is still very high, in all areas of SUP.
We are facing a new era right now, an era that we actually have the sport of SUP to thank for. A new generation of watermen on Maui has taught us to fly over the water with SUP. Kai Lenny showed us how he flew over the water with his 14 foot raceboard and a foil. This led to a rapid development and the SUP industry quickly realized the potential of SUP and Foil. It wasn’t long before the foil was conquering surf spots that weren’t really surf spots at all. The development was unstoppable and foiling, with or without SUP, spread like wildfire around the globe.
With the spread of Foiling, a forgotten toy was also rediscovered: the Wing or “Windweapon” as it was called in the 80s. It seemed that the Wing was just waiting to be rediscovered and with Foiling, the time had come. The excitement in the SUP and windsports community was huge. All water sports enthusiasts immediately had to try the Foil plus Wing. I, too, was excited about the new world of possibilities that was opening up. It felt like deja vu when everyone was enthusiastically getting on SUPs on Maui a good 14 years ago. It was with enthusiasm (and a few frustrations) that I first taught myself to foil and then to wing.
I saw no other choice than to include these two new water sports in the Stand Up Magazine and to accompany them. So from now on, I will also be documenting foiling and winging with Stand Up Magazine. There is simply too much going on to let the subject lie fallow. We have many intersections in the three sports that we want to highlight. Winging and foiling are just learning to walk. Organizers are trying out competition formats and there is already a “Global Wingsport Association”.
So I’m going into the 11th year of Stand Up Magazine in a spirit of optimism, just like back in 2010. It’s incredibly exciting to see how these new sports are developing right now. I’m also very sure that we will most certainly go to the Olympics with SUP before the end of this decade. So the next ten years will be anything but boring.
We are only now beginning to understand the potential of the Foil and will be exploring many new avenues. Social media is full of pictures of people using the Wing as an accessory for just about anything you can get around with. We’ve discovered the Wing as a sporting device for the water, but the Wing has no limits. More than just a water sports device, the Wing is a sail with an incredible number of uses.
With the Foil it is different: The Foil can only be used in the water, but it has an enormous potential and we are still in the preliminary stage of the children’s shoes here. 90% of the people see the Foil as a sport device, which you can only use in connection with an external energy. But what if I tell you that you can fly with a foil as long as you want, even without waves and wind?
Anyone who is currently looking at foiling will notice that foiling is always operated in conjunction with an external energy. This comes either from the wind or from a wave. But what if the drive comes directly from the rider himself? Very few people are talking about that at the moment. The potential of foiling independent of wind and wave is greater than the industry has yet realized. At the moment we are concentrating mainly on: Wing-foiling, SUP-foiling, kite-foiling, foil-surfing … so always: the foil plus something.
In this issue we introduce you to a man who is part of a core group of people who practice foiling without external propulsion: Pump foiling. This is foiling powered only by the force of the legs and shifting of the body weight.
We even go so far as to give an open ear to the claim that pump-oiling has Olympic potential. Raise your hand: Who believed SUP had Olympic potential ten years ago? Exactly. That’s why there’s a pioneering mood again at Stand Up Magazine.
We’re heading into an interesting decade:
SUP has reached mainstream interest and many athletes owe their success to the growing interest in the sport. For the first time in years, we have a glimmer of hope that SUP will actually be at the Olympics in France.
SUP is, of course, quite a bit ahead of the new sports. But we’re watching the movers and shakers of the wingfoil sport begin to organize. We are seeing key figures in the sport pushing the boundaries of what is possible.
Can wingsports learn from SUP’s mistakes? Will the industry go too far to the extremes, as in windsurfing, and thus alienate the “normal” clientele? I am watching these developments step by step with great excitement.
I see myself with the Stand Up Magazine in the responsibility to illuminate the simplicity of Wingsportarten and Foiling and to point out, how one can venture to the new Sportger.te. (Let’s not forget: now that you can buy SUPs at Aldi, many of these customers are also becoming aware of wings and foils).
That’s why I’m in the spirit of optimism: I want to explain the sports equipment and how to get started to interested parties in the same way we did with SUP. Namely as simple as possible, without people immediately shying away. If we only show big waves and jumps, we will never gain the interest of a broader clientele.
My appeal to the industry:
We have to be very careful not to make the same mistakes as in windsurfing. We are lucky that SUP is a very easy sport and we have been able to get so many people on the water and maintain this success until now.
The Wing is also very easy to learn and you don’t even have to get out on the water to understand the characteristics of a Wing.
If we are not careful, wingfoiling will start where windsurfing left off.
Mike Jucker
Not so foil: I’ve never come into contact with a sport that seemed derma.en technical and complicated right from the start. If we want to inspire new people here, then we have to proceed carefully and put a lot into education. We are already drowning in a flood of material that I have never seen in any sport I have ever played.
 Pumpfoiling, as I have mentioned, is not yet perceived as a sport. Surfing or SUP associations have not yet shown any interest in addressing the issue. But for many people, I see pump-foiling as the entry point to foiling. This is a sport where it’s all about the foil, no sail and no waves. As an industry, we have an opportunity here to introduce newcomers to a piece of sports equipment without them having to have prior knowledge of another sport. Another great opportunity is the fact that pumpfoiling is not dependent on certain conditions or waters. The student/customer can practice as long and as often as they like. Here we have the chance to introduce the customer to the material and to give courses. This is what our report entitled “Urban Foiling” is about. It is important that we keep it as simple as possible, because the beginner can already go to his knees with words like “high aspect” and “dihedral angle”. I have experienced it on myself.
If we only show pictures of people riding their foils or guys twirling their wings and foils in the air and sell that as the status quo, then the sport will become a hype in the scene. The larger mass of weekend warriors will quickly lose their connection to it, once they have found it.
So with the new concept of the magazine, I hope to be able to do my part so that one day we can see ourselves with SUP at the Olympics and we can inspire many more people from different sports for SUP, Winging and Foiling.
Enjoy the lifestyle and be inspired by the stories in the magazine.
Thank you for your attention.