Foil Surfing world title to be decided at Lake Garda finale

Lake Garda will settle a first for foiling when the Surf Foil World Tour crowns its inaugural SFT Downwind Parawing world champions at Foiling Week in Malcesine from July 2-5. The finale at Fraglia Vela Malcesine sits inside a larger festival that has turned the Italian lake into the sport’s highest-profile stage, with the parawing title race now the centerpiece of the week.

The men’s championship is still open after the early rounds in Leucate and Cabarete, even with Bastien Escofet of France leading the standings. Dimitry Evseev, Sergiy Doroshenko, Tom Pansard and Maksim Pashkevskii remain close enough to change the outcome in one decisive session, which is why the July 2 SFT Parawing Downwind Race Course World Cup and the July 3 SFT Downwind World Cup, subject to weather conditions, matter so much. Escofet needs a clean, controlled final stretch; any mistake on Lake Garda’s tactical water could hand the title to one of the chasers.

The women’s fight is tighter on paper and heavier on pressure. Manon Dupe of France leads the standings with 2,500 points after Leucate, ahead of Mae Haas on 2,350 and Viola Lippitsch on 2,225. Bowien Van Der Linden and Sofia Ginzinger are also in the mix, but Dupe enters Malcesine with the clearest path to history. If she holds the lead, she becomes the first official women’s world champion in a discipline that is still writing its rulebook.

That is what makes this finale different from a routine stop. SFT’s first official parawing World Cup in Leucate drew 30 men and 9 women, an international field that included experienced downwind riders, wingfoilers, windsurfers and newer converts to the format. The course there mixed long reaches, beam reaches, downwind sections and stashed-wing segments to test glide efficiency and technical skill, and riders even held an open feedback session to shape the sport’s future. The event carried an €8,000 prize purse, a sign that the new class already had real stakes.

Cabarete added a second proving ground from June 18-21, with reliable trade winds and typical June conditions of 15 to 25 knots, air temperatures around 28 to 32 C and water temperatures around 26 to 28 C. Together with the Lake Garda finale, those events have given parawing a credible foundation across France, the Dominican Republic and Italy.

Foiling Week’s broader program, spanning June 27 to July 5, also places the SFT title race alongside Moth, WASZP, Switch, IODA, BirdyFish, ETF26 and X-15 classes. That crowded stage is part of the story: parawing is no longer a side experiment, and the riders in Malcesine are racing to become the first names attached to a new world title.