In just her first season racing in the thrilling new Olympic class of windfoiling, Kiwi Veerle ten Have has zipped into the world’s top 10. She tells Suzanne McFadden why speed is her friend.
The faster Veerle ten Have rockets across the water, the calmer she becomes and the smarter the decisions she makes.
It’s like a supernatural ability some athletes possess – to see a situation play out in slow motion, and have time to process what could happen next.
It’s a gift 21-year-old ten Have reckons she's always had. And she’s always been a speed freak, from her many years as New Zealand’s top female windsurfer in the RS:X class.
And now that she’s switched to the swifter iQFoil windfoiler, with an ultimate aim to race it at the 2024 Paris Olympics, she sees things more clearly.
“I’m going faster, 100 percent - which I love, and I need,” ten Have says. “When I’m going that fast, I think most clearly, when everything in my brain has slowed down and I’m calm and relaxed and make smarter decisions
“When I’m moving slow, I have too much time to think and I get into kind of a panic state.
“When I raced the RS:X even if it was windy as, I could look around and slow everything down. But when it was super light and we were all pumping, your heart rate’s up, everyone is so close, and you have so much time to think and worry about when you’re going to tack next.
“Now I’m always moving fast which is a super good thing for me.”
So far, ten Have has clocked 49.7kmph (around 27 knots). “The boys are breaking 50kmph most sessions on their bigger equipment, and I think 50 will be on the cards for me soon, hopefully,” she says. “It’s just a fun goal I have.”
In the past week, though, ten Have has proved she’s “super serious” about this endeavour, too.
Yesterday she ended up fifth in the famous French Olympic Week regatta in Hyères, racing with the world’s best. That came on the back of her first international outing in the iQFoil three weeks ago, at the Princess Sofia Regatta in Palma, where she finished an impressive seventh.
She could have finished even higher up the table at her latest regatta, had light winds not scuppered the final medal races yesterday.
Once the bane of her sailing career, light winds are now her strong suit.
“Because we didn’t race today, I want to race even more now,” she said yesterday. “I can’t wait to get back racing, even though it’s been only a couple of hours.”
For now, she’ll have to be content with training races with the other four windfoilers in the New Zealand team sailing their way through the Northern Hemisphere summer. Next stop: Italy’s Lake Garda, to get ready for the European championships later this month.
It's another step on the road to the Paris Olympics in two years’ time, where the iQFoil will make its debut.
And where ten Have wants to be the first Kiwi windsurfer to compete at the Olympics in 16 years – since ‘Golden Girl’ Barbara Kendall made her swansong in Beijing 2008, her fifth Games.
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Ten Have, who was born in The Netherlands but made New Zealand home when she was five, admits she was disappointed when she missed out on last year’s Tokyo Olympics.
She’d secured New Zealand a windsurfing spot at the Games by finishing 26th at the 2020 world championships in Australia. But her overall form wasn’t strong enough to meet the stiff selection criteria.
“I disputed it; I asked questions about why I didn’t go, I didn’t just say okay,” says ten Have, who’d established herself as won the world’s top junior boardsailors, winning silver at the world youth championships in 2019.
“But at the same time, it gave me this opportunity to get into foiling.
“If I’d gone to Tokyo, I would have had to stay on the RS:X and train by myself, because we couldn’t leave New Zealand and train with other countries. It would’ve been really hard to continue.
“Of course, I didn’t think of that at the time they said ‘You’re not going to the Olympics’. But as time moved on and the whole world was changing, I realised this could be a really good opportunity – a glass half-full kind of moment.”
So, she decided to leave her hometown of Tauranga and move to Auckland in October 2020 to give windfoiling a serious shot.
It wasn’t a simple transition. She’d been windsurfing on the water – not above it – since she was 13 (a competitive equestrian, she only took up windsurfing when her horse broke its pelvis).
“I like change - but in small steps. So it took me quite a while to change over. I was like ‘It’s something new, I’m going to be bad at it’. And I found that daunting,” she says.
“A lot of other Kiwis were already foiling, and I had to think did I really want to change over? It’s a big commitment buying all new gear.
“So I thought I’ll just try it. The first time I got up foiling I was actually this is pretty cool.”
Well, to be accurate, the first time she got up on the foils, gliding above the water, she crashed. “I was bunny hopping. But by the end of the session, I was up on the foils, not comfortably, but still…,” ten Have laughs.
“It was so cool to learn from scratch again, to have that steep learning curve.”
Through her first year on foils, ten Have was simply enjoying herself, not seriously thinking about campaigning in the class.
Yachting New Zealand even suggested she might consider moving into a boat, but she was adamant she wanted to keep her feet on a board.
“They asked a couple of times if I wanted to try the 49er [skiff], but I could never see myself having to rely on someone else to sail,” she says. “I couldn’t sail a slow singlehanded dinghy either.
“The iQFoil is the most fun of all the classes. Everyone is super laid back, so chill – there are no dramas or issues.”
Over time, ten Have became more serious about foiling and realised she was “kind of good at this”. And a concerted Olympic campaign became a reality.
Her coach, London Olympian JP Tobin, helped find her a place to live with Olympic gold and silver medallist Jo Aleh (who’s back campaigning in the 49erFX with Molly Meech; they were 12th in their first regatta together in Hyères).
“We became flatmates and friends. I know if I ever need to ask her anything, Jo’s there,” says ten Have. She moved home to Tauranga before she headed to Europe with the rest of the New Zealand sailing team.
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Travelling and training with a clutch of windfoilers is an interesting new phenomenon for ten Have, so long the only Kiwi windsurfer on tour, who’d train on her own in Tauranga’s harbour.
Now she has the company of Brianna Orams, a junior world champion in stand-up paddleboarding who’s also made the switch, and three male windfoilers – Thomas Crook, Eli Liefting and Josh Armit (who finished eighth in Hyères).
“It’s a little bit stressful at times, I have to admit, waiting for other people and this and that,” ten Have laughs. “When you’re by yourself, you can work in your own time and get things done.
“It’s testing my patience a little bit, but socially it’s a lot more fun.”
They’re all learning as they go, too, in what’s essentially a brand-new class.
“When you get to my level, we go out in a lot of breeze, we’re trying new settings, new things to build on the techniques we already have. We’re always looking for better and faster,” ten Have says.
The women's iQFoil fleet start at the Princess Sofia Trophy regatta in Palma, Spain.
The past two years she’s spent on the waters of the Hauraki Gulf, when the global pandemic made it difficult to leave the country, have turned out to be hugely beneficial.
“The consistency of staying in one place means I’m a lot fitter than I ever was,” she says. “I’ve spent a lot of time in the gym, and found a great passion for it, somehow.”
For years, ten Have struggled in the lighter air – she had the strength, but needed to fine-tune her power-to-weight ratio.
“Now when there’s light winds, I’m able to pump for a long time and expend more energy without getting so tired. They’re my new strength,” she says.
“I feel capable in the winds as well. I don’t feel so anxious before I go on the water because I know there’s nothing that I’m super bad or super good at – I’m just excited to race every day no matter the wind conditions. I know when I perform my best, I’ll be at the top.”
In Hyères, where the breeze fluctuated through the regatta, ten Have only placed outside the top 10 in one race. She’s quickly adapted to sailing in a fleet of 60 women, all on identical equipment – the bright red sails looking like a field of butterflies.
“There’s no one who’s super slow. They’re sitting on your hip the whole race - make a mistake and they’ll zoom past you. You need to learn to read their manoeuvres, and be prepared for anything,” ten Have says.
She’s suffered a couple of crashes – one last week, hit by another sailor while she was leading at the final mark – but is thankful this class makes helmets and impact vests mandatory.
“It’s not comfortable crashing at this speed,” she says. “But it’s just feels so much more freeing on the foil.”
After the disappointment and uncertainty, ten Have’s found her happy place. And at just 21, this could be the start of a long future on foils.
