Kiwi windfoilers show plenty of potential at iQFoil world championships in Brest

Veerle ten Have - iQFoil world championships in Brest - October 2022 © iQFoil Worlds

New Zealand sailors performed well at the recent iQFoil world championships in Brest, with Veerle ten Have making the Medal Race, and Josh Armit winning five of his 14 races.

Veerle ten Have unquestionably looks back on her first year on the world windfoiling circuit with a considerable amount of satisfaction but there’s a big part of her that wants a whole lot more.

The 21-year-old finished ninth at the iQFoil world championships in Brest after qualifying for the top-10 medal races in sixth. Medal racing in the windfoiling class is different to other Olympic classes, with the points starting at zero again, but ten Have couldn’t recover from a poor start in her quarter-final and was eliminated.

But that top-10 result carried on an impressive year in which she also finished seventh at the Princess Sofia World Cup event in Palma, fifth at the Olympic Week Regatta in Hyeres and 12th at the European championships in Italy.

“I’m obviously really happy and at the beginning of the year if you had told me I was going to be in the top 10 at the worlds I would hardly have believed it,” she said. “I know now I can do better and can be in the top three. I’m happy with top 10 but I want more.

“It’s little things. There were a couple of races where I made tiny, stupid mistakes, like a couple of gybes in the slalom when I fell in and that cost me 20 points. I just need to be more consistent to be in that top three. I know I’m capable of doing that, it’s just putting that into practice.”

Ten Have is on her way back to New Zealand and will soon get stuck into a summer of training before returning to Europe early next year.

Josh Armit is equally motivated to make further progress up the men’s standings after finishing 18th in Brest. The 21-year-old showed enormous potential at the world championships, winning five of his 14 races, but was unstuck by a crash that saw him disqualified from one race and unable to race another due to damage.

He pushed hard on the last day of gold fleet racing, when he needed to make up six points to qualify for the top-10 medal races, but struggled in the brutal conditions with steep chop and driving rain.

“I’m definitely disappointed [to miss out on the top 10] but, looking back, it was my first worlds in the class and I was super-pleased with how I ended up. To jump up near the front of the fleet and to fight for some race wins feels really good.

“I’m really motivated to push a bit harder. Knowing how close I was in the end to breaking through into that top 10 has made me really hungry.”

The Dutch men’s squad are likely to be among a handful of international windfoilers heading to this country to train this summer, which will push the entire New Zealand squad.

Thomas Crook also showed glimpses of potential, winning a race and finishing 44th in gold fleet, and Eli Liefting collected three top-three results in silver fleet to finish 67th overall.

The countdown clock to the Paris Olympics is ticking loudly in the background and New Zealand's top windfoilers now have a taste of what is required.

As ten Have said: “This worlds was important but this is just the beginning.”

Full results click here