S - Ep 088 Daniela Moroz

Daniela Moroz — 6x Formula Kite World Champion — joins Liam and Freddie just weeks after finishing 4th at the first Olympic Formula Kite regatta in Marseille. A long, wide-ranging chat: her path from a 45-minutes-from-the-water San Francisco childhood into kite racing and foiling, an eleventh-hour foil-brand switch ahead of the Games, the class’s weight/kite-size controversy, and a detailed, still-raw account of the judging controversy that cost her a medal.

In brief

Daniela learned to kite around age 11–12 (her dad had kited since 2005), was taught to ride a raceboard within a year by Sandy Parker at Sherman Island, and switched to foiling over winter 2013/14 — almost 11 years ago at time of recording. She rode early Mikes Lab prototypes (including, by her account, the very first foil Mike ever built, which she says was “unrideable”) through to the Bullet series, winning her first four world titles on Mikes Lab foils. When Mike’s foil couldn’t be registered for Olympic-class racing — he wouldn’t disclose his full manufacturing process to the class without a confidentiality guarantee — she moved to the Levitas foil, then switched again to the “Chewbanger” only five months out from the Olympics, in January 2024, after finishing 5th (her first finish off the podium) at 2023 Worlds and hitting serious burnout. The gamble paid off: Chewbanger, a foil that had reportedly never won a Worlds title in either fleet, won gold in both the men’s and women’s Olympic fleets. Much of the second half covers the Marseille regatta itself — atypical windless conditions, a race committee she says badly mismanaged the schedule (6 of a planned 16 races sailed), and a chaotic, undocumented protest-room decision that dropped her from bronze to 4th. The episode closes on the class’s ongoing weight-and-kite-size debate, and her post-Games reset: a half Ironman signed up the week she got home, and early planning for LA 2028.

Key topics & claims

• Early progression (Daniela): learned to kite ~11–12; her parents were windsurfers/racers around the Bay Area, Hawaii and the Caribbean. Living 45 minutes from the nearest spot (and swimming competitively through school) meant kiting was rationed to weekends and the Thursday-night series — she credits that scarcity, not abundance, with building her competitiveness and appreciation for water time.
• Coach and first raceboard: taught to ride a raceboard by Sandy Parker (who teaches at Sherman Island) within about a year of learning to kite, alongside a handful of other young teens — this was still the three-fin raceboard era, before foiling.
• Foil history (Daniela): first proper race foil was a “Sword” (possibly Sword 2); then an early F4 foil (“super soft,” maneuverable, unlike the “train tracks” Sword); then, from around 2016, Mikes Lab foils — she says she was the first person to ride Mike’s very first hand-built foil (“so hard to ride… I don’t think he ever even wrote it”), through the early Bullet line to Bullet 6/7 by ~2021. Her first four world titles (2016–2019) were all won on Mikes Lab foils.
• Why she left Mikes Lab: at the point Mike’s foil needed Olympic-class registration, the rules required disclosing the full manufacturing process with no confidentiality guarantee — Mike judged the risk of leaking his development secrets to rival brands (or manufacturers) too high and declined to register. She frames this as ultimately good for him, freeing him to keep developing (he has since moved almost entirely onto wing foils, where demand/waitlists now exceed the old kite-foil backlog).
• Levitas → Chewbanger switch (Daniela): rode Levitas from when Mike’s foil dropped out of contention until January 2024. Despite winning consistently on it for two years, she finished 5th — off the podium for the first time — at 2023 Worlds, partly (she believes) because of her lighter bodyweight versus rivals, and hit major burnout (“my first thought waking up was I don’t want to be here”). After a reflective break (gym time in Miami, tennis, deliberately gaining weight), she and her team decided to seriously trial the Chewbanger. She rode it exclusively for two weeks at a Mexico training camp in January 2024 before deciding to switch — five months before the Games — calling it a decision that “could either be really stupid or it could work.”
• Fleet foil split at the Olympics (Daniela): roughly 16–17 of 20 women and ~15 of 20 men raced on the Chewbanger. She notes it was notable/ironic that the Chewbanger had never won a Worlds title in either fleet before winning gold in both at the Olympics.
• Weight and kite-size controversy (Daniela, with Liam/Freddie prompting): she says the sport’s push toward larger kites has made the format effectively reward heavier athletes, creating unhealthy pressure to gain weight — she describes 2023–24 as “horrible,” constantly stressed about eating enough/too much, and says roughly 99% of the fleet privately has a problem with it. Proposed fixes discussed: a hard weight limit (she thinks unlikely, though not unprecedented — world sailing had one for the Star class historically); or, her preferred option, the race committee mandating a specific kite size per wind band for everyone regardless of weight, forcing riders to sail underpowered more often so it’s “more skill and less about just power.” She also describes testing a weighted backpack around 2021/22 to see whether added mass genuinely helped — it did, but flags the fairness problem of lighter riders needing to carry disproportionately more weight to reach the same target.
• Race committee criticism (Daniela): describes a specific, detailed account of what she calls a badly disorganised regatta — wind available but riders not sent out, then sent out as wind died and races abandoned; a mark-boat crew she says moved at “five knots” to reposition a top mark on the last scheduled fleet-racing day, burning time they didn’t have. Formula Kite, the last class to start racing at the Games (from ~4 August), ended up sailing only 6 of a planned 16 races. She contrasts this with the excellent June–July conditions she trained in all season (living in Marseille from 1 June) and having won “the coach regatta” (a pre-Games test event) — an edge she says the weird Games-week conditions and truncated schedule nullified.
• The medal-race controversy (Daniela, detailed first-hand account): going into the final race she was tied for 3rd. On the first downwind leg, on starboard, she had to lift her kite to avoid a Netherlands rider (transcribed “Annalou”) who she says sailed onto port in front of her — she raised her hand and protested. Race finish order put her back in bronze position pending results. In the protest room, an umpire eventually produced a scoreboard showing her with a 1.1-point penalty for “causing contact” between the Dutch and French riders at the top mark — an incident she says she wasn’t involved in. When asked which rule she’d broken, one jury member said “Rule 13” (a monohull-tacking rule that doesn’t exist in kite racing rules), then corrected to “Rule 15” (changing course), which she says also didn’t apply since she was sailing a straight line on starboard. Her own protest against the Dutch rider was separately dismissed — the umpires said “we didn’t see it,” despite (she says) drone footage and TV broadcast showing her raised hand. No hearing was held because the race was drone-umpired, a system where umpires’ in-the-moment calls are final with no appeal and — by her account — no written record of facts/rules found. She also raises a fairness concern that a US and a French umpire worked the final with US and French riders in contention. Net result: she finished 4th, missing bronze; gold went to Ellie Aldridge (GB) and silver to the French rider (Lory/Lorian, name uncertain).
• Processing the result (Daniela): describes an “adrenaline crash” and anger in the week after returning home, then rewatching the footage and race video convincing her she genuinely hadn’t erred, which she says brought some peace (“if I were to do it over again, I’d do exactly the same thing”). Signed up for a half Ironman (Cancun/Acapulco, 1 December 2024) the week she got home as a new physical/structural goal, and had already begun planning for LA 2028 by the time of recording.
• Sport psychology / “racing alter ego” (Daniela): two and a half years working with a sport psychologist on a deliberate “racing alter ego” — staying warm/friendly day-to-day but adopting a different, more locked-in persona for competition, a concept she says she drew partly from Lindsey Vonn’s writing on the same idea.
• Custom Olympic boards from Ken Adgate (Daniela): rode Mikes Lab boards early on, then an unnamed other brand’s boards for several years (staying on their 2021 shape because she preferred it to later changes); when that brand wouldn’t accommodate the specific tweaks she wanted ahead of the Olympics, she called her long-time family friend Ken Adgate (known to her from Sherman Island since she started kiting) around March/April 2024 and asked him to build her a board around an unspecified, deliberately undisclosed internal system. He built her three boards in total, refining the shape/system each time, with input from her coaches Chris and Tucker; the final version was her Olympic race board.
• Young athletes in an adult sport (Freddie/Liam raise, Daniela responds): the hosts flag a broader concern about young talent (some now competing internationally at 11) being exposed to a fully adult competitive environment, and the responsibility on adults around them. Daniela says she personally always felt well looked-after and safe in the racing fleet — describing her male competitors as protective “big brothers” — but says she’s seen and heard of worse experiences for young riders (especially girls) in the freestyle/big-air side of the sport.
• Daniela’s dad, unscripted cameo: the hosts put Liam’s “is there a different Daniela in racing mode” question directly to her father, who was in the room; he describes her as far more positive than him, and says the family watched the final day’s events only from behind a fence, with no real-time access to her or explanation of what had happened.

Gear / brands mentioned

Mikes Lab (early prototype foil, Bullet series through Bullet 6/7, boards), F4 (early race foil), Slingshot (“Space Pickle” — her first-ever board, a shared entry-level board for new foilers), “Sword”/“Sword 2” (early race foil, brand uncertain), “Levitas” and “Chewbanger” (rival Formula Kite racing foils, brands not otherwise named — see candidate pages below), Ken Adgate (hand-built Olympic race boards, three built in 2024), unnamed prior board brand (2021 shape, declined to make Daniela’s requested tweaks).

Notable quotes or takes

• On her early gut call to switch foils five months from the Games: “I think it was the right choice… even though I didn’t get a medal at the Olympics” (paraphrased).
• On the protest-room decision: she compares it to a gymnastics judge ignoring a move the whole world watched live — paraphrasing her own analogy, “the whole world sees it… but the judges say they didn’t see it.”
• On the sport’s weight pressure: says the run-up to the Games was “horrible,” constantly stressed about calories, with a “double standard” she feels male competitors don’t face to the same degree.
• Freddie pitches, semi-seriously, letting Formula Kite racers throw seaweed at rivals’ foils like a Mario Kart banana peel — one of several running bits with Daniela, an admitted big Mario Kart fan who played it in the athlete container while waiting for wind at the Games.

Mentioned

Daniela Moroz · Liam · Freddie · Ken Adgate · Mikes Lab · F4 · Slingshot · Ellie Aldridge · Sandy Parker · Kite Foiling · Downwind · Hood River

Auto-transcribed (faster-whisper, unreviewed), no speaker labels — attribution above is inferred from context and flagged where uncertain. Several proper names are garbled or unclear in the transcript and have NOT been resolved to real people/brands: the Netherlands competitor transcribed “Annalou,” the French silver medallist transcribed “Lory”/“Lorian,” Daniela’s US team staff (“Chris,” “Tucker,” nutritionist “Shelly,” ops manager “Sally,” and a “high performance director” whose name is unclear), her early foil brand “carofino”/“Carapino” (a low-aspect precursor foil, name uncertain), and a “Marcus” met at dinner in Hood River discussing the same weight pressure — possibly but not confirmed to be Marcus Tardrew of CODE Foils; not linked here pending confirmation. The 49er sailors “Hans and Ian” (bronze medallists, mentioned in passing) are outside foiling and not otherwise catalogued in this wiki.