Episode #131 - Waterspeed Defi Training Challenges Update - May 1, 2026

[00:00:00] Welcome to Foil Life. Whether you wing, kite, parrowing, downwind, pump or e-foil, thanks for being here. Alright Flo, thanks for coming back. Yes, let's do another update. Defi is right around the corner. How many days are left on the challenges? The challenges, they take activities until the 6th of May. So just a few days before Defi Kite starts, the challenges are open.

[00:00:28] So get your last activities in because, yeah, it's time now to get on those leaderboards and see how you stack up against your peers. Frank, there's only a few days left, man. I'm landlocked, but you can do this for us. So we're going to take a look at who is winning. And just a little shout out to Jean Legale from Grissant. He is still in first place in the Windsor, Foil and Finn category. So congratulations, Jean.

[00:00:54] You don't have that many days left. And I don't think the places have changed in the Windsor category, right? We still have Pierre and Dominic. Yeah. And to add on top of that, he is set the fastest time as well with 23.55. Oh, wow. Congratulations, Jean. So he's leading the whole pack out of almost 300 people. So, yeah. We also, we just had a monitor. If you guys haven't had the opportunity to catch that episode,

[00:01:23] he talks to us about his 24-hour challenge that he wants to do. He wants to do over 800 kilometers. And it's cool how he's going to do it overnight because he wants to hook up these flashlights and stuff. Anyways, the episode is 15 minutes, so check it out. But pretty cool and fun thing to do. They're just trying to plan out when they're going to do it. So, over to Wing 4, we have Martin, who's still leading from IAR. I'm pretty sure that's at La France as well.

[00:01:53] And then we have Piero Rapido and Rio Pierre Mael, top three over there. So that's pretty exciting. What do we have in the kite category, Flo? We have Leopold leading the pack, also posted his activities in IAR.

[00:02:14] Then Martin Bastien in Cui Barron with 27 minutes. And then Piero Rapido again. So he's in third with kites. His activities are coming from Brest. So he's third in kite and second in Wing Foil.

[00:02:34] But when we went through all these stats, we saw a little nugget in there that Erwan Giffreau has some very fast times in both, like all the three categories. Kite, Wing Foil and Wind Serve is in position four in kites, 15th place in Wing Foil, and 7th place in Wind Serve. So, yeah. He's on to it. True waterman, I guess.

[00:03:03] Mon am. Yeah, he's fast in all departments. Definitely. Well, congratulations, Jean-Juan, for that. That's pretty cool to be able to compete in all three categories, especially with that many people on here. That ain't too bad. And once again, so the fastest overall time, a little shout out again, Jean, 23.55. That is pretty intense for 20 kilometers. Yeah.

[00:03:26] Yeah. And the other top three in Wind Serve is Pierre Guibal, also in Grisson with 24 minutes and 34 seconds. And then we have with 25 minutes and 44 seconds, Dominic Cocho, he posted his activities in Neuzydlize. So, that was cool to see some, yeah, some activities coming in from other places than France.

[00:03:52] And just to recap quickly, this times they go about the 20 kilometers. So, yeah. Covering 20 kilometers in like 24, 25 minutes. That's kind of the speeds we are seeing. So, yeah. We want to pull up this lake real quick for those on YouTube. Yeah. It's a tiny little lake here. That is pretty cool. Oh, it's not that small.

[00:04:22] It looks small, but it's near Vienna. Yeah. Austria. Yeah. Yeah, they get some good mountain breeze there. Oh, that would be a... I imagine. Yeah. It's the largest endopheric lake in Central Europe. Oh, it's the largest straddling Hungary and... Italy. Oh, I just lost my place here on Wikipedia. Oh, Austria and Hungary.

[00:04:52] Okay. Yeah. Well, congratulations for that. That's a cool spot to train. Yeah, we're seeing... That's the cool thing about these challenges. Like, people from all over the world can join them. We're seeing sessions coming in from Australia. Shout out to Noel Ryan. He's wing foiling. So, we're seeing activities coming in from Japan, from the States, from Denmark, from Spain,

[00:05:19] from the UK, like everywhere. So, that's very cool. And the person with the most amount of activities is Dana Peterson, with 16 activities already. He's posting activities between 29 and 35 minutes. And we have our friend, Mike George, wind foiling and windsurfing on the Fin, 15 activities.

[00:05:46] So, they must have been having some good winds in the UK. Okay. And another one that stood out was Pierre Motfon. He just... I think he just arrived to France. And he posted 10 activities so far, but he is dedicated. Man, he's getting like full training mode for Defi. He has been spending six hours on the water in one session. So... Oh, let's go Pierre. Yeah. Yeah. He's onto it.

[00:06:16] Well, we only have a few days left. And one thing that we want to shout out to the community, which would be really cool to do, is if you could add your gear so we can call it out, because it would be fun to see who's writing what. Obviously, full name would be awesome. And then maybe adding a comment to the session, what felt good, what allowed you to hit the speed you were able to hit, what allowed you to hit that time.

[00:06:39] So we can kind of get some real world data on that and just give that information out to more people who are training at home or wanting to hit Defi themselves. So that is going to be a super fun event and it's not very far away. So just a few shout outs to a few people who've been sending some fast times in the wing for discipline. We have in 17th position, Pauz Thomas. We have in 20th position, Christophe DeCruy.

[00:07:09] In 25th position, Felix Neuling. And let's go a bit further down. We have in 63rd position, David Rye. And in 66th position, Fred Barriera. Let's see. In the windsurf side of things, we have, let's see, let's find some good... Ah, here.

[00:07:38] 71st position, Frederic Lehmann. And... 71st you said? Frederic Lehmann. Let's see what he hit. 28.93 knots. Top speed, yes. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Who else do we have? Um, Marcelo Zardenberg. Sorry, we are butchering some of these names, hey? We do apologize, folks. Yeah. 53. That's a good speed.

[00:08:07] Yeah, 53.58 kilometers. Yeah, congratulations, Frederic. That's getting speedy. Let's go to Francesco Grianti. 58th position. Let's see where he's posting his activities. So, his top speed... 22.67. He's got a little catch-up to do but he's still doing pretty well. Wow, posting decent sessions. Three hours. Yeah. In Dervio.

[00:08:32] So, if you haven't posted an activity just yet, you have until the 6th of May to get your gear, get on the water and get going. Um, we have something pretty cool. We have something pretty cool. If you come to DEFI and you have posted an activity on water speed, next to the registration at DEFI, come find us and show us that you cracked the 25 knots barrier and we will give you like an exclusive hat.

[00:09:00] We don't have one for everyone. So, it's limited availability. But, yeah, come say hello, show your top speed and we will hand you a nice little reward and you'll become part of the 25 knot club. So, hope to see you at DEFI. For those who are just tuning into this one and want to tap in, let me see how fast 25 knots is in kilometers an hour. 46.3. All right, you guys can do it. I've hit 50 windsurfing before in Bonaire.

[00:09:30] So, anybody out there, you guys can do that too. Yeah, 50 on the water is pretty fast, eh? It's getting there. Yeah. Yeah. We want to do Luteritz next year and it got a hit above 65. So, I think I'm going to have to grow some bigger bowls. Yeah, yeah. Some cojones. So, what other kind of prizes are people winning?

[00:09:54] I know they have this jersey which is going to be something that John was really looking forward to wearing at the contest. Because he thought that would be super cool to be able to represent in that fashion. Yeah. What other little things should people win? So, pretty much everybody in each sport who is on top of the challenge leaderboard gets rewarded the golden jersey that is being done at the first long riders brief.

[00:10:23] And then that gets handed over to the one who wins the next race. So, that's up for grabs. And then you can, if you're on top of the leaderboard here, you can win a ticket, a free entry ticket to next year's Daffy. So, that's awesome. Oh, sick. Pretty cool. A little bonus? Yeah, a little bonus to get yourself into, like reserve your spot for next year already. Alright guys, so you heard us. Keep pushing. Keep trying to beat.

[00:10:52] Let's see if anybody is going to knock down our champion here, Mr. Jean. If not, Daffy is coming up soon. So, have fun in the water. Stay safe. And we'll catch up with you guys on the next update. Yes. Thanks Luke. Alright man. You're welcome. Chat soon. Ciao. Bye everybody.