Backflipping at the Age of Eight

"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.

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 hav contributed to this development. We live withinwalking 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.

So after school, a real gang of 5 kids head down to the water. It’s their playground in the best sense of the word, they spend time together, have fun, try things out – and learn new tricks at the same time. One of Tebbe’s best friends is one year older. It’s wonderful to watch them goofing around together on the water, pushing each other. Even when I’m not there, the two of them arrange to meet up on windy days and I get videos in the evening of them whizzing around the bay. With these ingredients, it’s a no-brainer: the kids can always go to the water, all their friends do the sport, their parents support them and, luckily, they also have the equipment for them.

But the crucial thing about Tebbe’s fast learning: I was never pushy, never. As a parent, you have to be totally relaxed and not force anything. You can only offer the children the opportunity as often as possible, but they should enjoy it themselves. If Tebbe didn’t feel like it after 5 minutes, I stopped immediately.

Sometimes he wanted to get back on the board after an hour, but sometimes not. You have to go through that. But at some point it just ignites, then they get their own drive.

And while we’re on the subject of tips, perhaps the most important one is: children need a good, fitting wetsuit. If they are cold, the fun is over quickly. But if they are warm, they can play in the water all day long. As parents of this gang of kids, we set ourselves a rule right at the beginning: None of us ride without a helmet either, then the kids accept the helmet totally cool too. And we put an impact protection vest on them. This not only protects them, but also keeps them warm and buoyant. Of course, the first time Tebbe was foiling in deep water I was pretty much helicoptering around him, I was never far away and was able to intervene quickly. But if you’re winging alongside the kids yourself, you can also give them tips and they’ll put them into practice straight away.

You shouldn’t take a textbook approach, children don’t want to ‘learn’ a new maneuver. Rather, they play,they simply try out all sorts of things, rotate the wing for fun and quickly get a great feel for the material.

Tebbe always tells me when he tries something new on the water, I’m close by and can intervene if anything happens. But of course the kids don’t mind if they tumble. They just crawl back onto the board and off they go. Last summer, Tebbe came to me and said: I finally want to do flips with the wing. I was really scared of doing my first backflips myself, it’s not that easy to rotate with the foil above you. And I doubted whether he had enough jumping power for that. So I said: Not yet on flat water, but maybe you can do the first kickers in Denmark in the fall. Of course, he didn’t forget that and reminded me again on day two of our vacation. I asked: Okay, what do you want, front or back? Tebbe just said: It doesn’t matter, as long as it’s a flip. Then I sat down with him and explained exactly what he had to do.

Tebbe was already very good at front and back flips on our trampoline in the garden, he has great body control and knows how to rotate. But the children also just do it on the water and don’t think about it too much. And he spun around on his first attempt on the water.

Basically, Windsurfing is a great way for kids to get started: a large, stable board on which they can tumble around and a small sail with which they can learn – moving backwards leads into the wind, moving forwards away from the wind. It’s similar with the wing. If the kids can then steer the wing and stay on course (they can also practise with the wing well on a Windsurfing board), all they have to do is balance on the foil. The variety of equipment available for Wing Foiling is a stroke of luck for all juniors. Surf foil boards with 25, 30, 35 liters and small foils from Kite Foiling were available right at the start of this new sport. I was quickly able to putTebbe on equipment that was suitable for a little one and really fun.

He started on a 35 liter board, now he rides 25 liters. On our smallest Duotone production surf foil board, we have installed footstrap inserts that are optimized for the small stance of kids. Tebbe now weighs 28 kilograms and foils our 500 Carve with a 75cm mast. The Duotone wings are available up to small sizes of 2 square meters. If the 4 square meter wing suits me, Tebbe usually uses 2.5 square meters. The wing equipment is practically tailor-made for the kids. That makes such difference.

What’s more, Wing Foiling is not nearly as physically demanding as any other water sport. Wing Foiling requires so little strength that kids can ride for hours without a harness. They push themselves off for jumps and fly to heights that are mind-blowing.

Children are in their element in this sport with the strength they can muster. And that’s how they reach such a crazy level so quickly. For me as a father who loves water sports, it is of course the greatest thing to see what fun Tebbe has on the water. It won’t be long before he’ll kick my ass.”

Thxs Klaas and Tebbe!