Acherer and Suardiaz open 2026 Wingfoil season with Leucate wins

Tomas Acherer and Nia Suardiaz turned Leucate into a changing-of-the-guard opener for the 2026 wingfoil freestyle season, with both riders holding off deeper, better-known fields as the format got squeezed by a shaky forecast. In a draw that brought 24 men and 20 women from 12 nationalities to Leucate-La Franqui, the young names landed hardest when the pressure was highest.

The men’s final went to Acherer, the Austrian who finished ahead of Italy’s Rocco Makana, the United States’ Luca Vuillermet, and Spain’s Nathan Berger. Suardiaz stayed on top in the women’s event and kept her Leucate title, beating Ava Segersten, Sofia Ginzinger, and Manon Dupé. That podium matters because it was not just a repeat win for Suardiaz, it was also a reminder that the top end of surf-freestyle wingfoiling is getting younger and less predictable by the month.

Leucate did not hand out easy heats. A poorer wind forecast forced organizers to skip the seeding rounds entirely, sending the men straight into Round 4 and the women into Round 3 so the event could finish cleanly. That changed the whole shape of the contest. Riders had to manage progression and timing instead of simply unloading their biggest, most wind-hungry tricks. In soft or inconsistent breeze, the cleanest line through the heat mattered as much as raw amplitude, and that is exactly where Acherer and Suardiaz separated themselves.

The list of names they pushed aside tells the story even better. Benjamin Castenskiold, the 2025 men’s overall champion, went out early. So did established riders such as Malo Guenole, Axel Gerard, Bastien Escofet, and Chris MacDonald. On the women’s side, 12-year-old Sofia Ginzinger reaching the podium was the kind of result that makes every veteran rider pay attention. Marie Schlittenbauer, the 2025 women’s world champion, missed the opener because of injury, which only widened the sense that Leucate was opening a new door rather than repeating last season.

That is why this stop matters beyond one trophy ceremony on the Mediterranean coast. Since 2021, Leucate-La Franqui has hosted the only French leg of the GWA Wingfoil World Cup, and the world tour now stretches across 10 stages a season. The Office de Tourisme de Leucate leans hard on the site’s reputation as a wind machine, citing 300 windy days a year, and the Mondial du Vent remains the place where the next wave gets exposed fast. If Leucate was the first read on 2026, the message was clear: the class is deeper, younger, and much less willing to hand the medals back to the old guard.