Nicolas and his brother Thomas are anything but unknowns on the regatta scene. Thomas is surfing for France at the Olympic Games this year on the RS:X and Nicolas was already IFCA Foil World Champion in 2019 and 2020. The two haven't made much of an appearance on the PWA World Tour so far. Until Nicolas took advantage of the new format in the slalom - free choice, foil or fin - at the first World Cup after a year and a half break due to the coronavirus and was the only rider to compete in all races on the foil, winning by a wide margin. World Cup photographer John Carter simply threw a few key words at Nicolas after the event - and got detailed answers.
FOILS
I started foiling five or six years ago and immediately loved it because I come from a sailing background. I grew up on a boat and previously sailed a lot of Optimist, then Techno 293s and RS:Xs. I've always been fascinated by tacking hard and sailing deep under sail. The foil is just so fast at any angle to the wind. I can surf anywhere I want with the foil. I'm also keen to keep pushing the boundaries of this new discipline. I love all sides of foiling, the strong winds, the light winds, and I just want to become more efficient in every area. I have a bit of a technical background, so I'm focussing on improving every single detail to become more efficient on the water. You have to understand how it all works to push the sport further. It's a really technical sport and you have to understand the physics behind it and how it's supposed to work.
WORLDCUP ISRAEL
My plan wasn't necessarily to foil the whole time in Israel. I wasn't sure if I could foil in this wind strength. I knew I could foil in strong winds, but I didn't realise I could foil so efficiently in this wind. Just before the races I found some new settings that worked really well, so I felt more confident than I had expected. I decided to give it a go. I knew it was going to be close when the others were sailing with Finn 7.8 sails, but I never expected to be as far ahead as I was on the first few days. On the straights we were all very close together, in the gusty and shifty winds I could keep up, but in the gybes I was 20 to 30, sometimes even 50 metres ahead. Then it was done! If you have the same speed on the foil as with the fins, with the advantage you have in the gybes...then it's over! The strategy for jibing with the fin is completely different to that on the foil. It's difficult to make the same turn on the foil as with the fin. But you have a lot more options and can still overtake with a wide gybe because you lose almost no speed. It's super-efficient in all conditions. After the first day, the job was basically done for me. I just keep trying to push the boundaries of foiling. I'm happy that I won, but I'm even happier that I've shown the world that this is an option that can be utilised and maybe we can take it even further. I was aware that these were very tricky conditions for the drivers with Finn. We have to keep that in mind. It was gusty and changeable with wind shifts, which played into my hands. A few times the course was quite hard upwind and that was super easy with the foil. I felt efficient the whole time. But maybe in perfect conditions it would have been a lot tighter for the Finns. I don't even know if I would have got into the finals then. We'll see how it all works at other spots and what the foils can do there.
I only used my 7 sail and the 550 wing for one race on the second day because the wind was still a bit light. Otherwise I was travelling with my 6 and my smaller wing, the 430 Phantom. It's a much smaller sail compared to many of the slalom racers. I have the feeling that a larger sail can create a lot of drag. Once you're on the foil, you don't need as much power to continue foiling efficiently. When jibing, the small sail makes you more manoeuvrable and you can attack better. I had my GPS watch on to record how fast I was travelling. On the first day, in the last race, I reached a top speed of 35 knots on the foil. Matteo Iachino overtook me on the first beat. I think he was doing 37 knots with the Finn. The fin is still faster, but you have to push hard for it. As soon as you're going longer distances or upwind, the foil is so much easier to stay fast. With the fin, you have to push, push, push. It's much more physically demanding.
BACKGROUND
I was born in France. My parents lived on a boat that we sailed to New Caledonia when I was very young. Later, we also lived in Tahiti for four years. I crossed the Atlantic when I was three years old and the Pacific when I was six. The boat was our home. When I was young, I just enjoyed exploring and moving from one place to another. I lived on the boat until I was 18 - until I came to France to study. When we moved to New Caledonia, my brother Thomas was the first to start windsurfing, while I sailed Optimist. I also started windsurfing when I was eleven. I competed in Techno and RS:X regattas because I thought they complemented each other very well. As a sailor, you learn how the wind works, what the clouds are doing and when the next gust is coming. It helps when racing if you understand wind and weather. Sailing is a super complex sport. I love sailing more than windsurfing. I love windsurfing because of the feeling, but I'm just a fan of sailing in general, any kind of sailing. When foiling took off, it was a way for me to combine my passion for windsurfing and sailing. You fly, you're fast on the water and you can be very tactical when foiling. Tacking is very efficient and jibing is easy. Foiling is so efficient. It just opens up all the possibilities to sail strategically, which I love. Many things are not possible or at least hardly possible with the fin. Foiling just opens up a new way of sailing.
FINNING
Classic windsurfing with a fin no longer appeals to me as much. I like the feeling, but I feel so much more efficient on the foil. The feeling of surfing fast with the fin is great, but as soon as the wind shifts or you want to reach a certain point, the foil feels so much more complete. This makes it frustrating to still surf with the fin. Foiling just opens doors that were previously closed. That's what I love about foiling.
MOTIVATION
To be honest, I don't feel like a competitive person - only towards myself. I just want to improve myself. If I can improve the sport at the same time, I'm super happy about that. It's not about beating the others. I just want to do the best I can. If I end up in 30th place and have given it my all, I'm still super happy. That's the philosophy I want to follow in everything I do. I feel like I need to go to the next Olympics because it's the best way to keep pushing myself and find new ways to improve. It will also give me a different perspective on the sport. I think iQFOiL and PWA World Cup are not opposites, they complement each other. So, I'm not that competitive. I like to win, everyone likes that. If I don't win, that's okay! I just want to improve.
TRAINING
I've actually been training almost exclusively on the water for a few months now. I've only done the sports that I enjoy to keep myself in shape and that complement foilsurfing. I didn't do any other sports at all. But for a while now I felt I needed to be a bit fitter and stronger to improve. So I went to the gym and improved my cardio fitness. If I had to work out my training weeks, I'd say I have three or four cardio sessions a week and then I'm on the water five or six times. But that doesn't just mean windsurfing. It can also be wingfoiling or anything else.
TIPS
If I had to give just one tip, I would say: try out all the settings on the foil. Don't be afraid to change a good setting. You can always go back to a good setting if you don't like the new one. You have to experiment to find out if there are better settings. How can you know if you could ride faster if you never try? I read a lot of scientific articles and do a lot of research to find out what can make me faster. That's how I try to improve my general knowledge and that makes me happy.
And then I would say don't be afraid of falling. Falling is the key to improving and knowing where your limits are. The only way to learn to fall is to fall! If you never fall, you won't learn how to react if it does happen. It's good for your body to know how it reacts and what to do if something goes wrong. I would say that to be fast on the foil, you have to feel comfortable. If you don't feel comfortable, you can't go fast or you'll crash. These are the basics! To learn to be fast, you have to have balls! Once you've learnt it and are able to surf comfortably at a certain speed, it feels good. To get to the next level, you have to have some balls again because you're pushing yourself to the limit. Pushing yourself to the limit is always scary. That's the good thing about our sport. Because it's new, we can improve so much!
PHANTOM
I have been driving for this brand for two years now. I like the way we all work together. I've been using the foils since 2019 and now I design the boards for Phantom, which is cool. This way I can improve my own platform. One of the big advantages at Phantom is that both myself and my brother Thomas have an engineering background. Alex, the head of Phantom, also has an engineering mindset. It's easy for us to calculate things and understand the theory. We can match the feeling on the water with our theoretical background. This makes it much more efficient to improve foils and sails. We know where we need to have the pressure point of the sail or how a foil planes better or gets faster and we understand the theory behind it. I think that's my biggest advantage over the other riders now and that's why I'm ahead. To this day, I have the feeling that I am one step ahead of all the other foilers.
WORK
As well as training and developing for Phantom, I'm on the board of the iQFOiL class. As a driver, I try never to make my decisions to improve the situation for me personally, but to make the sport better for everyone.
40 KNOTS
Cracking 40 knots with the foil is one of my goals. I have the feeling that you can still achieve things with the foil that are not possible with the fin. As soon as you feel confident at 37 to 38 knots, 33 to 34 knots suddenly feels easy. Sailing 34 knots is still challenging, but I wasn't afraid to fly around the course at 34 knots. Trying to reach 4o knots on the foil, I had a few big crashes. But you also gradually learn to crash more efficiently, because it's very different to finning. For the safety of the other riders on the course, it's good to know that you can hold on to the equipment and maybe swerve to avoid hurting other people.
FUTURE
We all know that the foil is a beast, especially on the cross! On upwind courses, it will take some time before everyone accepts that it can be more efficient. On big boards it has already happened! All riders agree that foiling is faster on the big boards. To be faster than a medium slalom board with a 7-sail, it's still a big step in terms of control, stability and speed - that will take time. But it will come. I have the feeling that normal recreational surfers also like foiling because it is less demanding than surfing with slalom equipment to achieve the same speed with more comfort. For many surfers who are not in such good shape, foiling is easier. So I believe that foiling will gradually grow in the market! Foils are getting easier and more stable, so they don't scare people off like they did five years ago. I think in a few years we will have some beginners who can foil rather than planing.
OLYMPIA AND iQFOiL
The 2024 Olympic Games in Paris and Marseille (sailing/windsurfing) are one of my goals. The French team is very strong, so it will be difficult to qualify. It will be a fight to the finish. I think I'm going to continue on two tracks - PWA World Cup and iQFOiL - for at least two or three years. Maybe later I will focus on the Olympics. As someone who wants to improve the sport, I am happy to share my information. I don't share everything, of course, but I probably share too much! But some things I keep to myself. I like to improve myself and see that everyone else is improving too. I want to push my friends in the right direction, so I get them to try out some of my settings and ideas. I help my opponents, but the fact that I'm helping them allows me to improve myself at the same time! It's like teamwork!
FOIL vs. FINNE
The biggest surprise at the race in Israel was that obviously the non-French guys hadn't really realised what we were doing on the foil. They weren't prepared to see us sailing 6s so efficiently. We surprised and shocked everyone. Finns aren't dead yet, but the big fins on a big board are through. The centre slalom board is far from dead. 7.7 sails with fins may soon be gone, but 7s are still a long way off. There is a big evolution going on right now. But I don't think the small slalom board will ever go out of fashion. The foil board will never be better than a board with a fin in forty knots of wind and more. There will always be conditions where the fin is better. It's just that the limit will shift over time and I don't know how far it will go.
It's been crazy on social media. I received a lot of great messages. A lot of people have said that this was a reward for my hard work, and I think that's true. And I feel like people weren't prepared for what happened in Israel. This event will be important for the future. Maybe with this new era of foiling we will see races develop where we can be closer to the shore and close to the spectators. As athletes, we should be open to what the public wants to see. So we need to make the races more interesting. I feel that foiling allows us to take the sport further and we should capitalise on that.
