La Barrosa Cements Wingfoil Legacy With Four New Spanish Champions

Nia Suardíaz has won the Spanish wingfoil slalom title in each of the six years the Spain Wingfoil League has run national championships, and her latest defense at La Barrosa sets the clearest benchmark in the discipline: gaps are built before the pressure arrives.

The 2026 Campeonato de España y Andalucía de Wingfoil wrapped four days of racing at La Barrosa beach in Chiclana de la Frontera, organized by the Spain Wingfoil League, which consolidated Chiclana as the national epicenter of the discipline for the sixth consecutive year. Competition ran across two formats, Freefly Slalom and Surf Freestyle, with Andalusian regional titles also on the line.

In Slalom, the multi-world champion Suardíaz demonstrated her dominance by claiming the Spanish title for the sixth consecutive year, while in the men's category, Manuel Morillo delivered a composed performance to take the title. Morillo, from the Real Club Náutico de Arrecife, won five of the seven heats contested during Sunday's session and topped the general classification on 8 points, three ahead of Canarian Jeremy Rodríguez and seven clear of Leo Zabell. Meteorological conditions on Monday and Tuesday prevented further racing, making Sunday's classification the definitive result. For slalom riders calibrating their own training priorities, Morillo's heat-win ratio under gusty Cádiz conditions is the number to study: consistency across repeated attempts in variable wind, not just a single fast run, is what created the margin.

What conditions favored: The second day ran with gusty but constant wind, allowing four heats of Freefly Slalom in the senior men's category alongside parallel qualifying rounds in Junior Sub-16 Surf Freestyle. The decisive Sunday session saw gusty northeast wind at La Barrosa allow the completion of seven heats in the surf-slalom discipline. The first day's lighter breeze had already sorted the classification in slalom, rewarding riders who read line choice and transitions cleanly before the power gusts arrived later in the week.

Freestyle produced the weekend's most compelling finishes. Nathan Berger revalidated his Spanish Freestyle title in the final, leaving no options for the young Sam Rossmeier, who had to settle for winning the Sub-16 category at just 12 years old. Berger's back-to-back title confirms that trick execution under final conditions, not just practice-session consistency, is the differentiator at the top of the Freestyle bracket.

The standout performance across all categories came from Sofía Ginzinger, who climbed the podium four times. The Tarifa-based rider swept three gold medals: Surf Freestyle Senior Women, Surf Freestyle Sub-16 Women, and Surf Slalom Sub-16 Women, adding a bronze in Senior Women's Slalom. At just 12 years old, the junior world champion is already positioning herself as one of the great prospects of the sport. Competing across senior and junior categories in two disciplines simultaneously, and medalling in all four, she makes the case for breadth over specialization at the development stage.

The Spain Wingfoil League's calendar continues with the Copa de España Wingfoil in Tarifa from June 29 to July 3, where the field will get its next chance to close the gap on the standards these four riders just set.