GWA Wingfoil World Tour opens in Leucate with stacked title race

Leucate opened with enough depth to feel like a season verdict in miniature, not just a tour stop. The surf-freestyle draw brought 28 men and 19 women from 10 nations to the 29th Mondial du Vent, and the headline tension was immediate: Denmark’s 14-year-old Benjamin Castenskiold arrived as defending world champion, while Germany’s Marie Schlittenbauer was sidelined after winter surgery, blowing a hole in the women’s title picture.

That mattered because Leucate does not soften the conversation. The Tramontana can drive across the wide sandy beach and push the venue to 40 knots, a setup that rewards riders who can keep tricks clean while the wind is trying to tear the lines apart. In wingfoil surf-freestyle, that kind of load is a separator. It exposes who has the race-and-style package to hold under pressure, and it makes the opening stop a better read on the 2026 order than a normal early-season event.

Schlittenbauer’s absence immediately lifted Spain’s Mar de Arce to top seed, with Viola Lippitsch, Zara Maillard and France’s Manon Dupé all in position to challenge for the women’s podium. That group gives the bracket a different feel, with no single name dominating the conversation and more room for a first-round result to reshape expectations before the tour has settled. A strong opening from any one of those riders would ripple quickly through the rankings talk.

The host nation also added its own weight to the story. France entered 17 riders, giving Leucate a home-country backbone that should amplify both pressure and support across the beach. For Castenskiold, the men’s storyline stayed centered on whether the teenager could back up a world title against a deep international field in one of the sport’s most famous wind venues. For everyone else, the stop was a blunt early test: in conditions like these, the sharpest line, the cleanest execution and the calmest heat management can change the tone of an entire season before summer even starts.