WIND IN THE SAILS
WHY KITESURFING HAS LIFTED OFF DURING COVID
School teacher Anja Reuthe plans to be kitesurfing long into her golden years, such is the 48-year-old’s love of the sport. She’s been enjoying water sports, predominantly kitesurfing, for nearly 20 years and is encouraging more women to give it a go.
An unexpected impact of coronavirus has been a massive local boom in kitesurfing. As beach exercise was permitted to continue during lockdowns, lesson bookings and demand for equipment grew substantially, according to Chris Rose, owner and operator of Kite Rite Australia.
He’s been longingly eyeing off the water from afar, kept busy by trade that has “been like Christmas for eight weeks”.
“I’ve been selling a kite every day,” he says. “Normally I do a couple a week. I think the bike shops have been busy too. I am almost at the point where I am going to be sold out in a couple of weeks and nothing more is coming in.”
He credits the demand to former customers who have found the time to dive back into the sport and he anticipates Cairns will face another boom of kitesurfing travellers in search of good winds and a tropical winter.
“When you are out kitesurfing, you are not thinking about work or coronavirus. You are in the moment. That’s something I am missing because I am in the kite shop and teaching,” Chris says. “I used to be a plumber. A lot of people are resetting their values due to this COVID thing. They’ve slowed down and they kinda like it.”
Anja moved to Australia from Hamburg, Germany, in 2010. She’s a French teacher at St Andrew’s Catholic College but her downtime is spent skimming across the ocean, usually at Yorkeys Knob.
As a young windsurfer living in her native Germany, Anja saw kitesurfing on television and became intrigued.
“The gear was smaller than windsurfing gear, so less cumbersome. I saw the guys doing jumps and playing in the waves,” she says. “I got some lessons and kept going. I’ve been doing kitesurfing for about 19 years now.”
Far North Queensland has favourable conditions for the sport, with “good, reliable wind for nearly nine months of the year”, according to Anja, who said the conditions were also favourable to the different disciplines of kitesurfing, such as twin tip riding, surfboard riding and kitefoil boarding, her latest interest.
“One thing is the adrenalin and the thrill, it’s being out in nature and being connected with the ocean and the elements,” she says.
“You always keep learning something new. There is always a new challenge and it’s never boring. It’s a fantastic way to see the world and it’s easy to meet new people through that and share the experience.”
Anja says the Cairns kitesurfing scene is open to newcomers and “like a big family”.
“We cheer each other on and enjoy each other’s company,” she says.
She recommended getting lessons from a certified instructor before launching into the water as “it is an adventure sport and it has some risk”.
“It’s a very gentle way to become fit,” she says. “I have a lot of girls ask me ‘you must be so super fit, you look so strong’. Managing the kite is more a skill of co-ordination ... it’s like riding a bike. You want some kind of general fitness, otherwise the fitness comes with the learning.
“I wasn’t very fit when I was learning and it’s been a great journey to becoming much fitter and it increases confidence.
“I would love to see more girls in the sport. There are a few of us but it would be lovely to see even more. It’s quite male-dominated. I would encourage every girl to just give it a go.” It’s a sport Anja plans to never give up. “I want to be the oldest female kitesurfer in the world,” she says. “For me, kitesurfing has broken that barrier of not restricting myself to what other people say is or isn’t right for my age. It’s really given me the freedom to decide what’s right for me and I think kitesurfing is a nice liberation.”