“Have you watched Top Gun? The excitement you get when you watch that is kind of that to be honest.”
British windsurfer Sam Sills explains the thrills and spills of the sport’s new format, iQFOil.
“When you’re flying so fast on the race course, with 100 other people about to crash or win a race, it’s really intense.”
Sills, 30, learned to windsurf on a lake near his home in the Cornish town of Launceston and worked his way up the British ranks.
He wasn’t good enough to make the Great Britain squad for the 2016 or 2020 Olympics on the old RS:X style boards and instead went off to work as a naval architect.
But when it was announced that the faster iQFOil class was being introduced for Paris 2024, he returned to the sport and made rapid progress.
iQFOil boards use hydrofoils attached to the bottom of the board to lift it out of the water, allowing for spectacular runs and speeds of up to 30 knots (approx. 35 mph/55 km/h).
“From the start with foil I was pretty much top 15, then top 10, then top five within a few months,” Sills told BBC South West.
“Then it was just about thinking outside the box, working with the team and just trying to solidify everything we were learning every day and every month to keep moving forward.”
“Enormous pressure”
In February, Sills won bronze at the Lanzarote International Regatta, after crashing in the final of the iQFOil Games in the Canary Islands a month before.
The format, designed to be exciting for spectators, sees the top three competitors from the heats battle it out for medals in a winner-takes-all final.
“It’s a huge pressure,” says Sills, who was selected for the Olympic test event in Marseilles later this year – putting him in first place for the only place available for a British athlete at the Games.
“The goal is to get in first, so you ensure at least a medal.
“But the bad thing is you go in first and then you watch your competition, the other nine guys, go from the quarter-final to the semi-final, and then you’re going to face two guys you don’t know yet in the final.
“It’s pretty tough because when these guys come through they’re so excited, they’re so ready to beat you and take first place.
“So you really have to be mentally ready for that and put yourself in a place where you have that excitement as well and you’re ready to race, because you’re just sitting there watching it all unfold.
“A lot of times people pick up momentum and it’s a real mental game in these finals.”
So, could Sills win an Olympic medal next year, after almost giving up the sport?
“I certainly visualized a lot of that sacrifice and hard work,” he says.
“I skipped Christmas with my family, I skipped my 30th birthday, my uncle passed away and I couldn’t attend the funeral, I couldn’t be with him in his final moments.
“The moment when hopefully we can take a medal and celebrate that with all the people who have been involved, sometimes I visualize it and get quite emotional about it.
“But I try to use that and channel that into performance and give it my all, so we’ll see what happens.”
