Foiling Week gets Special Event status

World Sailing has awarded the upcoming 2022 Foiling Week Special Event status, joining the America’s Cup, The Ocean Race, SailGP, World Match Racing Tour, PWA World Tour, Star Sailors League, and GKA Kite World Tour as events with this designation.

World Sailing Special Event status ensures the world governing body formally recognizes and sanctions major international sailing events. World Sailing support with promotional and marketing activities, Race Officials, Racing Rules of Sailing, Regulations and anti-doping and nationality rules.

The status for the 2022 Foiling Week Special Event ensures the competition can grow, reach more people, and partner with international and national foiling programmes and pathways to create events within the event.

“Foiling Week is not just an event; it is a community and a network that is about action. We don’t only care about the foiling and greater sailing community,” said Luca Rizzotti, founder of Foiling Week.

“We create opportunities, with the goal in mind of being primarily agents of change. The event’s initiatives are well known in the sailing community and reach beyond the sport including partnerships with universities, manufacturers and non-profits in the environmental and social responsibility spaces. We are all connected and we should grow as a community, responsibly together.”

Foiling Week is the hub of the world hydrofoiling community and the only World Sailing Special Event that is community-based. It includes a well-attended Forum, where talented and creative individuals share ideas and collaborate to make connections and improve the way the event operates and the class evolves.

Special Event status ensures World Sailing formally recognizes and sanctions the events.

It also means that Foiling Week will follow the targets set by the World Sailing’s Sustainability Agenda 2030, which includes working with the Magenta Project to promote professional sailing opportunities for women, and the World Sailing Trust which provides funding for a diverse group of initiatives to increase access to sailing and promote sustainable practices in sport and manufacturing.

As part of the Charter, all Special Events have a comprehensive sustainability strategy, and aligned applicable principles as set out in the World Sailing Sustainability Agenda 2030, while committing to working with World Sailing to accelerate the objectives and targets.

“The addition of Foiling Week to our group of Special Events is exciting for the future of sailing,” reports David Graham, World Sailing CEO. “The growth of the event has been phenomenal to witness, going way beyond the racing to galvanize an entire movement.

“We are pleased to be working hand-in-hand with them to create new avenues for partnership as well as opportunities to further the World Sailing Sustainability Agenda. Foiling Week has already taken great strides in this area and we are looking forward to learning from each other and inspiring a positive change throughout the sailing world.”

Foiling Week’s mantra is ‘connect, cooperate, change’. From the start, the event has been one of firsts. The first women’s and kids foiling trials; the first sustainability initiatives reducing entry fees for car-pooling participants and the elimination of single use plastics at the event site.

The SuMoth Challenge, part of every Foiling Week since its introduction in 2019, was shortlisted for this year’s World Sailing 11th Hour Racing Sustainability Award. A global challenge, it brought students from around the world together to design, manufacture, and sail a sustainable Moth.

Having hosted events in Australasia, North America, and Europe, Foiling Week has become a scalable, practical presence in sport both physically and online and is moving forward with World Sailing to connect, collaborate and make positive change in sport and beyond.

The first Foiling Week event took place on the shores of Lake Garda at the breezy Fraglia Vela Malcesine in 2014. Riders, designers and engineers were given the opportunity to share their ideas on foil ventilation, recycling of materials for construction and creating recreational beach foilers to shape the future of the sport.

The event is the leader in bringing responsibility and creativity into the sport and industry. It has led to innovations including the creation of a world-wide database tracking foiling injuries and solutions in training and clothing to address accidents which has become the very first scientific paper published in a leading magazine with repercussions throughout the sailing world.

Additionally, it has fostered partnerships with universities for sustainable construction like the SuMoth, where students design and create an International Moth entirely made of recyclable material. The design and build process uses life cycle assessments for new products to improve sustainability in every stage of the project.

These relationships build on the growing elements within Foiling Week including the annual Foiling Awards that recognise innovation and individual contribution to the event’s values of safety, sustainability and accessibility, and the newly launched Foiling Hall of Fame.