Maloja wind sparks eight-race wingfoil showdown in Silvaplana

The Maloja wind hit early and changed everything. What had looked like a stop-start regatta at Lake Silvaplana became a full-blooded wingfoil race day, with organizers squeezing in eight races across two sessions before thunderstorms closed in and the final shape of the leaderboard snapped into view.

That mattered because the 2026 Ensis ENGADINWING WingFoil Racing World Cup Switzerland, staged June 15 to 26 on Lake Silvaplana in Switzerland’s Engadin Valley, had spent much of the week waiting on the lake’s famous alpine mood swings. At about 1,800 meters above sea level, Silvaplana can deliver pure foiling when the thermal breeze fills in, but it can also stall the whole race course. When the Maloja arrived before the 10:30 skippers’ meeting was even over, the event finally found its edge.

In the men’s gold fleet, the day turned into an Italian duel between Alessandro Tomasi and Francesco Cappuzzo, while France’s Mathis Ghio and Poland’s Kamil Manowiecki slipped back. Tomasi pushed through the pressure until muscle cramps hit him in race seven, forcing him to retire and save energy for the finish. Even so, he held the yellow bib on tie-break after taking third in the last race of the afternoon. Cappuzzo answered with a win in that final race and said he felt like the “real Francesco” again, promising to “throw all in” for the Medal Series.

The women’s leaderboard carried its own tension into the last day, with France’s Vaina Picot leading the provisional standings before the medal race. Maddalena Spanu overturned that position and won the event, finishing ahead of Picot and China’s Yana Li after a long delay that pushed the Medal Race to about 4:30 p.m. The wait lasted for hours while race officials held for enough wind, then sent the fleet out into shifting, treacherous conditions.

Spanu’s victory was built on control rather than a single late surge. The Porto Cervo youth development sailor banked three wins, seven second-place finishes and two thirds across the opening series, a scoreline that kept her close enough to strike when the final race finally started. The result underlined why Silvaplana keeps drawing elite foilers back: on the right day, the Maloja does not just fill a schedule, it decides a championship. The lake will host the first-ever iQFOiL Master World Championship from August 17 to 21, another sign that this alpine course has become central to high-level foiling.