Kitefoiling: Singapore’s Maximilian Maeder third in fleet after first four races

PARIS: Singapore’s world champion Maximilian Maeder began his Olympics campaign with a mixed bag of results on Sunday (Aug 4) and sits third overall in the fleet after four races.
At the Marseille Marina, Olympic debutant Maeder accumulated eight net points after four races in the opening series. He trails Slovenia’s Toni Vodisek (six) and Austria’s Valentin Bontus (eight).
Maeder finished fifth position in his first race, topped the second, took second in the third race and did not finish the fourth.
There are up to 16 fleet races in the opening series from Saturday to Wednesday for kite-foilers, before the medals are contested on Thursday.
The opening series makes use of a low-point system like sailing, where points are awarded based on an athlete’s finishing position. For example, the athlete who wins a race gets one point.
The top two move on directly to the final, while the third to tenth kitefoilers compete in two semi-finals for the remaining final spots. The winner of each semi-final moves on.
In the final, competitors will need three race wins to secure gold.
However, the top kitefoiler from the opening series begins the final with two wins and will only need one more to take gold.
The runner-up from the opening series will need two race wins to take gold, while the winning semi-finalists need all three wins.
In May, Maeder successfully defended his kitefoiling world title. Last August, the kitefoiler clinched gold in the men’s kite event at the Sailing World Championships in the Netherlands.
Prior to the Olympics, the Asian Games gold medallist won five events in a row, with the youngster winning the men’s title at the Formula Kite European Championships in March.
Born in Singapore to a Swiss father and a Singaporean mother, Maeder was introduced to kiteboarding at the age of six by his father, Valentin, before he eventually progressed to kitefoiling.
Kitefoiling is a style of kitesurfing or kiteboarding, which are essentially sports using wind power from a kite to pull a rider along.
Kitesurfing is believed to have been invented in the 1970s, but it was only in the 1990s that it gained popularity, with the first competition held in Hawaii in 1998. 
In 2008, the International Kiteboarding Association was founded. The sport then appeared at the 2018 Youth Olympic Games.
Three years later, it was announced that kiteboarding will make its Olympic Games debut in Paris 2024, in the Formula Kite class which features a hydrofoil board.