Duotone Mag 2024

Photos Henning Nockel Copy  Bernd Zerelles “Getting into water sports was child’s play for Tebbe. As a family, we spend our vacation every summer at a lake, where I also started Windsurfing. It’s ideal for children to learn water sports there: the water is warm and shallow for many hundreds of meters. Tebbe really wanted to windsurf when he was 5 years old, but he couldn’t really swim yet. I put a swimming belt on him and paddled alongside him on a SUP. That’s when I realized how addicted he was to water sports. But our home spot in Kiel has deep water and I said to Tebbe: If you want to windsurf in the Kieler Förde, you have to have the first swimming badge, the seahorse. It was very easy. Motivated to the tips of his hair, he went to the swimming pool exactly once to take the seahorse test – without a swimming course. So he was allowed to go out Windsurfing in Kiel. Tebbe was then able to turn, jibe and ride freehand in the harness relatively quickly. And most importantly, he had tons of fun. Tebbe Voget started Wing Foiling at the age of six, two years later he is already doing backflips. He is the son of Klaas Voget, Division Manager Product and Marketing at Duotone Wing Foil. Here Klaas describes how easily accessible Wing Foiling is for children, how motivated they are and how quickly they progress. The following summer 2021, he was keen to try Wing Foiling. I kitted him out with a helmet and impact protection vest, gave him my surf foil board with 35 liters and the 1000 foil, and pulled him on the motorboat. Tebbe weighed just 20 kilograms at the time. It’s like riding a skateboard or a bike for the children – they simply balance in a playful way and learn incredibly quickly. Later, he grabbed my 2.5 wing and was already on the foil. On our next vacation in autumn, we winged together for 4 hours a day on a fjord. That’s when it clicked. So the short version is: Tebbe learned to windsurf at the age of 5, wing foil at 6, jumped his first 360ies at 7 and did backflips at 8. Of course, there are a few factors that have contributed to this development. We live within walking distance of the Kieler Förde and I have all my water sports toys at home anyway. Many friends who live in our street also have kids of a similar age who all wing foil too. BACK FLIPPING AT THE AGE OF EIGHT D U O T O N E D U O T O N E 58 59 W H Y T H E V O G E T S