When siblings Breiana and Scott Whitehead go fly a kite they take a helmet and a life jacket.
They need to. They race on kite foils at speeds of up to 70 kph on the open ocean water.
The Townsville teenagers are the best in the nation at hydro kite-foiling and have set their sights on the Paris Olympics when the sport debuts in 2024.
Breiana, 19, and Scott, 17, won the teams, women’s and Open National kite-foiling titles in Melbourne at Brighton Beach yesterday after five days of competition.
Kite-foiling is similar to kiteboarding but much faster.
WA Institute of Sport coach Ryan Palk, a former Australian sailing team member, likens the sport to Formula One car racing.
“It’s not really for everyone — you can’t just go out there. You have to have an enormous amount of respect for your equipment and the other competitors,” Palk said.
A foil lifts the board out of the water reducing drag and allowing the rider to reach average speeds of 50 kph.
The races look spectacular with the entire fleet sailing a windward-leeward course, their kites 13 metres above them.
“It’s an extreme sport — it is faster than any other sailing, so it speeds up the decision-making process,” Palk said.
It’s the speed that attracted the siblings to kite-foiling.
“It does get pretty frightening, there are no rules how far away we are but we all don’t want to die so we give each other room,” Scott said.
“There are definitely sailing rules, all sailing rules apply and generally it’s pretty good there’s not that many tangles because no-one wants to tangle because that’s your race gone, maybe your day and you can break gear very easily.”
Childhood on the water
Sailing is in their blood; they spent their childhood on the deck of the cruising boat built by their father, Murray.
The Whitehead siblings grew up sailing competitively in Townsville racing training boats, 29ers, flying elevens, and then graduated onto hydrofoil kites.
That sailing knowledge helps them tactically on the water.
“There’s lots of challenges,” Breiana said.
“Initially it’s being actually able to ride the foil and not crash all the time.
“Racing’s a whole other level — just going so fast and having to make a plan of where you’re going and getting around the course as best you can, it’s a bit tricky.
“There’s heaps of similarities that come across from sailing, a lot of the rules knowledge and that sort of thing, it’s all the same, it’s just another sailing race.”
Scott changed from sailing to kite-foiling when he was 13 and Breiana took up the sport two years ago.
“The foil is similar to a plane wing — it’s providing lift to lift our board out of the water and it reduces the drag significantly allowing us to go much faster over the water and have better sailing angles,” Scott said.
He is currently ranked third in the world for under-19s while Breiana is the third top woman in the world.
They’ve already competed internationally in the Middle East, Italy, Germany, Denmark, Mauritius, the United States, and New Zealand attending two competitions a year in between school and university commitments.
Planning for Paris
The Australian championships, held from January 17 to 21, attracted about 20 kite-foilers from across the nation who competed in 18 races.
The first day of the regatta included a mixed gender relay racing event, which is the expected format for the Paris 2024 Olympic Games.
The Whiteheads won that event, but their dad said it was too early to get excited about Paris 2024.
“They’d have to be at the top of their game for the next four years,” he said.
Palk said the siblings would be at a good age to aim for Paris, and the plan was to build their strength and race skills over the next four years.
“It is still ages until 2024, but I will be going to World Championships all over the place,” Scott said.
“I think our next one is in China in September and before then it is just full-on school work.”
The siblings train just about every day when home in Townsville and race each other, which has provided a boost for Breiana against the men.
This year she was sixth overall, up from 10th overall last year.
“It’s good to race the guys at Nationals,” she said.
“He’s [Scott] still faster than me, so it’s really good to benchmark myself with him and go as fast as we can together.”
Training together every day might be the edge they need to get to Paris.
Australian Sailing and Kiteboarding Australia last week announced joint planning had begun on how to best nurture an Australian gold medallist for the 2024 Olympic Mixed Kite event (IKA Formula Kite).
Australian Sailing CEO Ben Houston said the two organisations were working together to deliver the best athletes to be medal ready when racing starts on the waters of Marseilles in four years’ time.
“It’s an exciting prospect and we hope that we can create an Olympic pathway together that sees kiteboarders standing on the podium at the 2024 Olympics,” Kiteboarding Australia general manager Declan McCarthy said.
Scott finished the Australian Championships with a 22-point lead over second-placed Andrew Cooksey (WA) and Alty Frisby (WA) in third.
Breiana defended her national title as the top-ranked female and finished racing in the mixed-fleet in a strong overall sixth place.
Victorian Natalie Flintrop-Clarke finished second.
Topics: sports-organisations, extreme-sports, sailing, olympics-summer, people, human-interest, townsville-4810, port-lincoln-5606
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