When the Downwind Foil World Tour (DWFWT) launched in late 2025, it set out to do something the sport of downwind foiling had never had: create a season-long global leaderboard stitching together the most iconic races in the worldwide downwind foiling community. As the tour’s own season-closing post put it, the idea was simple — “create a credible global ranking that gives athletes more opportunities to compete, provides fans with a season-long storyline, and helps grow downwind foiling through greater exposure for riders, events and partners.” Ten months, three continents, and six races later, that vision has its first-ever world number ones.
How the season worked
The 2025–2026 tour linked six marquee events into one ranking, with each athlete’s best four results counting toward their final score — a format borrowed from surfing’s world tour model that rewards consistency over a single standout result. The calendar ran:
- St Tropez, France (October 7–12, 2025)
- Crozon Foil Festival, France (October 14–19, 2025)
- West Coast Downwinder, Perth, Australia (November 22, 2025)
- The Doctor, Perth, Australia (November 29, 2025)
- Maui 2 Molokai (M2M), Hawaii (July 17, 2026)
- Molokai 2 Oahu (M2O), Hawaii (July 20, 2026) — retained as the sport’s traditional World Championship race and the natural finale to the season
Alongside the global tour, the organisers also began building out regional series across Europe, the Americas, and Australia/NZ/South Africa, explicitly framed as a development pathway feeding into the elite global ranking.
The men’s race: a three-way season-long duel
The men’s title came down to a genuine season-long contest rather than a single dominant performer. Kai Thompson set the early pace with wins at both European stops — St Tropez and Crozon — banking two maximum 100-point results before the tour had even left France. Jarrod Snow answered at the tour’s Australian leg, winning both West Coast Downwinder and The Doctor in Perth to keep himself firmly in title contention.
The most eye-catching storyline, though, belonged to Edo Tanas, who didn’t contest a single European or Australian round but showed his skillset in Hawaii and swept both M2M and M2O with back-to-back maximum scores. The now three-time World Champion’s two-race haul was enough to vault him to third overall on 200 points — a reminder of just how much weight the Hawaiian races, and M2O in particular, carry in the sport’s pecking order. Here’s hoping Edo Tanas can make it out to more stops for the 26/27 season.
When the dust settled, Kai Thompson held on for the inaugural men’s title with 328.4 points from his best four results, narrowly ahead of Jarrod Snow on 307.7. Axel Pham benefited from attending all six races, finishing fourth on 198.1 and narrowly missing out on the podium thanks to Edo Tanas’s heroics in Hawaii. Kane de Wilde, Raiarii Fadier and Alex Tibby rounded out the top seven, all building their scores primarily from the Australian and Hawaiian legs. Tom Constant finished as the top European in 8th, Finn Spencer flew the flag for Hawaii/Canada in 9th, and 2023 Molokai 2 Oahu champion James Casey rounded out the top ten, edging out Frenchman Thomas Goyard by just 0.2 points.
Men’s final top 10 (best four of six results):
(Click here for full results)
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| Rank | Athlete | St Tropez | Crozon | WCD | The Doctor | M2M | M2O | Final Score |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Kai Thompson | 100 | 100 | 57.7 | 70.7 | 57.7 | 50 | 328.4 |
| 2 | Jarrod Snow | 57.7 | 50 | 100 | 100 | 37.8 | 16.9 | 307.7 |
| 3 | Edoardo Tanas | — | — | — | — | 100 | 100 | 200.0 |
| 4 | Axel Pham | 70.7 | 22.9 | 21.3 | 28.9 | 40.8 | 57.7 | 198.1 |
| 5 | Kane de Wilde | — | — | 26.7 | 50.0 | 70.7 | 37.8 | 185.2 |
| 6 | Raiarii Fadier | — | — | 40.8 | 37.8 | 28.9 | 70.7 | 178.2 |
| 7 | Alex Tibby | — | — | 50 | 35.4 | 50 | 24.3 | 159.7 |
| 8 | Tom Constant | 50.0 | 57.7 | — | — | 18.9 | 28.9 | 155.5 |
| 9 | Finn Spencer | 20.4 | 70.7 | — | — | 25.8 | 33.3 | 150.2 |
| 10 | James Casey | — | — | 70.7 | 57.7 | — | — | 128.4 |
The women’s race: consistency wins out over dominance
The women’s title told a different kind of story. Naumi Eychenne didn’t win an individual event outright, but she was the tour’s model of consistency, entering four races — St Tropez, Crozon, M2M and M2O — and posting the exact same 2nd-place, 70.7-point result in every single one. That remarkable evenness across two continents and vastly different conditions was enough to claim the inaugural women’s crown with 282.8 points, ahead of the field.
Annie Reickert took the opposite approach and it nearly worked: she skipped the European and Australian legs entirely, then arrived in Hawaii and won both M2M and M2O outright, banking 200 points from just two starts to finish runner-up. Emma Bridge was the standout of the Australian leg, winning The Doctor outright and placing across Crozon and West Coast Downwinder for third on 155. Individual event wins were spread across the field — Olivia Piana took St Tropez, Anaïs Guiomarc’h won Crozon, Bridge took The Doctor, and Reickert claimed both Hawaiian races — underlining how open the women’s fleet was on any given day, even as Eychenne’s steadiness carried the overall title.
Shae Foudy and Tomoko Okazaki fought a great battle across the Hawaiian double-header, trading placings between M2M and M2O and finishing dead level on 94.7 points apiece. Because Molokai 2 Oahu carries World Championship status, it settles tie-break situations ahead of the other events — a rider’s M2O result outranks their M2M result when scores are level, the tiebreak is otherwise settled by giving priority to the higher number of competitors in a race — which gave Foudy the edge over Okazaki despite M2O drawing a smaller fleet than M2M. Caitlin Baxter rounded out 9th on three results, and Marnie Bertram claimed 10th on the strength of her result at Crozon alone.
Women’s final top 10 (best four of six results):
(Click here for full results)
scroll
| Rank | Athlete | St Tropez | Crozon | WCD | The Doctor | M2M | M2O | Final Score |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Naumi Eychenne | 70.7 | 70.7 | — | — | 70.7 | 70.7 | 282.8 |
| 2 | Annie Reickert | — | — | — | — | 100 | 100 | 200.0 |
| 3 | Emma Bridge | — | 50 | 5 | 100 | — | — | 155.0 |
| 4 | Andrea Moller | — | — | — | — | 57.7 | 57.7 | 115.4 |
| 5 | Anaïs Guiomarc’h | — | 100 | — | — | — | — | 100.0 |
| 6 | Olivia Piana | 100 | — | — | — | — | — | 100.0 |
| 7 | Shae Foudy | — | — | — | — | 44.7 | 50 | 94.7 |
| 8 | Tomoko Okazaki | — | — | — | — | 50 | 44.7 | 94.7 |
| 9 | Caitlin Baxter | 5.0 | 40.8 | — | — | 33.3 | — | 79.1 |
| 10 | Marnie Bertram | — | 57.7 | — | — | — | — | 57.7 |
Two hundred and thirty-eight men and seventeen women scored points across the season overall — a field that the tour’s founders and community clearly hope grows sharply in year two.
Beyond the leaderboard
The tour’s Instagram (@downwindfoilworldtour, closing in on 10,500 followers as the season wrapped) doubled as its storytelling home through the year, and its season-closing post captured the mood: “Congratulations to every athlete who travelled the world, pushed their limits, and helped make history by being part of the first season of the DWFWT… we’re only just getting started.”
Conditions varied wildly by stop, which was part of the appeal — European autumn swells in Crozon, the gusty Mistral in St Tropez, and the trade-wind channels of Hawaii’s Molokai races all tested different skills. Perth and Hawaii, in particular, brought out the gritty side of the sport. The notoriously strong Fremantle Doctor sea breeze was undercut by an unseasonal storm that blew seaweed onto the Western Australian race courses, making conditions difficult but racing still possible for those willing to grind through it. In Hawaii, unusually light wind tested the fleet on the Ka’iwi Channel — the “Channel of Bones” — a race that should never be underestimated, and one that earned extra respect this year for just how hard it was.
The tour was backed by a small core of sponsors — including Code Foils, Axis Foils and Kaohi Leash — alongside event partners at each of the six stops, from Les Sailes Saint-Tropez and Crozon Foil Festival in France, to the West Coast Downwinder and The Doctor in Australia, and the M2M and M2O races in Hawaii.
With Kai Thompson and Naumi Eychenne crowned as the tour’s first-ever world number ones, and a genuine three-way men’s contest and open women’s field proving the format works, the Downwind Foil World Tour heads into its second season with a template established and, by every indication from its own community, plenty of momentum behind it.
