Fiander sweeps Munich pump foil as weather tests World Cup field

Half a meter kept Manel Arpa out of the Grand Final, and in Munich that was enough to flip a weekend. The Swiss crew, the Spanish star and a field of more than 100 riders spent June 12-14 fighting rain, strong wind and temperatures that felt more like winter than June at the Olympic Rowing Stadium, where every mistake carried championship weight.

That was the point of the stop. Munich was SFT’s first World Cup visit to the city, staged during Munich Water Days and billed as a combined e-foil and pump foil event with prize money on the line. It also counted toward the 2026 E-Foil and Pump Foil World Championships, so the riders were not just chasing a trophy sheet for one weekend. They were fighting for position in a season that is tightening fast, with Lake Garda set as the next major stop on July 2-5.

Fiander was the cleanest rider in pump foil. The Swiss rider, born Aug. 2, 2006, won all three races across three different course formats, the kind of sweep that leaves no debate about who owned the weekend. Fiander had already established himself as a serious force after SFT crowned him one of the first pump foil world champions in 2025, and Munich only sharpened that credibility. When the conditions got ugly, he stayed sharp.

Lift’s best batch of results came in Challenger, where Lucas won in his first weekend with the team and Vlad finished third. That gave the squad two podiums in the category and matched the tone of the whole stop: not pretty, but productive. The team’s recap made clear how much of the work happened off the course, with repairs and technical support running all weekend and riders sharing equipment, helping one another rig between heats just to keep the racing moving.

Arpa’s story was the cruelest. He was posting some of the fastest laps of the event and looked to have a lane to the Grand Final after reaching the semifinal against Justin, but a fall a few meters from the final gate ended the run by less than half a meter. That dropped him into the Small Final, where he beat teammate Alex Tete and still finished third overall. It was a reminder that in this sport, one mistake at the edge of the course can erase an entire championship run.

Munich mattered because it separated the riders who could handle pressure from the ones who only looked fast in clean water. Fiander left with a perfect pump foil sheet, Lift left with a win and two more podiums, and Arpa left with both a warning and proof that he still belongs in the title picture.