Urla foil racers clash over schedule as wind and rain test fleet

A 10:00 briefing in Urla turned into a fight over survival, with leading riders arguing that eight races were too many and pushing for two sessions of three. The race committee overruled them, sent the fleet into four back-to-back races, then came back after lunch with another rapid-fire block as the breeze built stronger and more manageable than forecast. The BS2 layout kept the final reaching legs close to the beach, and the morning was over in under two hours, a pace that made the 2026 WingFoil Racing World Cup Türkiye feel less like a regatta and more like a test of who could absorb the most punishment.

That strain had been building since Day 3, when the fleet already endured an eight-race schedule in Urla, Türkiye, from 19-23 May 2026 in the event billed as a World Sailing Special Event crowning the annual Open WingFoil Racing World Champion. By Day 4, the split in the fleet was obvious. Some riders came off the water exhausted and angry. Others wanted more. The Kiwi squad was among those happy to keep racing, along with Mathis Ghio and Francesco Cappuzzo. Cappuzzo put the debate bluntly, saying the fleet had come to Urla to compete at an elite level, not to treat the regatta like a holiday.

The afternoon only tightened the screws. Starts were fired every eight minutes, while rain fronts and thunderstorms threatened the wider bay. In the women’s fleet, that created a high-end duel between France’s Vaina Picot and Italy’s defending world champion Maddalena Spanu. The rising breeze initially looked like a chance for Spanu to lean on her heavier-air strength, but Picot found another gear and controlled the day, winning five of the seven races sailed. That kind of repetition mattered in a format this compressed, where recovery time disappeared and one bad launch could ruin an entire block.

The men’s standings were just as unforgiving. Poland’s Kamil Manowiecki had already established himself as a major force by the end of qualifying, while New Zealand’s Sean Herbert started Day 4 fourth overall and finished it fifth, still safely inside the top nine that advanced automatically to the medal series. Kosta Gladiadis climbed to 10th but sat 30 points behind ninth-placed Thomas Proust, leaving him dependent on the golden ticket race to reach the finals. By the end of the event, Picot and Manowiecki had taken the women’s and men’s titles, and Urla had made the class’s central truth impossible to ignore: in wingfoil racing, endurance, routine and decision-making can matter as much as raw speed.