Aimee Bright snatches iQFOiL Under-23 world title at the final mark
Aimee Bright was trailing with one mark left in the Grand Final. She rounded it first, held off Norway's Maya Gysler through the closing reaches and won the iQFOiL Under-23 world title in Puck, Poland.
It's the first world title for the 20-year-old from Manly Sailing Club, according to Yachting New Zealand's report, republished by Boating New Zealand. Bright collapsed onto her board after crossing the line. Stella Bilger, her close friend and training partner, joined her in the water.
Her start was poor. "I came in a bit early to the start, so I didn't have much speed coming off the line. Maya got in front of me and was a bit closer to the pin, so she rounded first," Bright said in the Yachting New Zealand report.
She won it on the run to the last mark.
"I saw we could be on layline, so I decided to gybe as tight to the layline as possible to give myself any chance of overtaking her... I pumped as hard as I could and managed to get a lot of depth on her and lay the mark first. She just didn't make it, so she had to gybe out."
The format left her no margin for error. Bright led the championship from start to finish and won 11 of the 20 qualifying course and slalom races, which earned her a direct place in the winner-take-all Grand Final. None of that would have counted if Gysler had held on.
The title goes one better than last year. At the 2025 Under-23 Worlds, Bilger took gold and Bright silver, a one-two for New Zealand. Bilger now sails for Australia but remains one of Bright's closest teammates, Yachting New Zealand reported.
"It's pretty surreal to call myself under-23 world champion," Bright said in RNZ's report on the win.
The result caps a season that has moved her into senior company. In May she won silver at the senior iQFOiL European Championship in Portugal, her first senior international medal, and she still rates it above this world title as the best result of her career. She also finished second overall at the Olympic Classes Regatta, held at the venue for the Los Angeles 2028 Olympic sailing competition.
iQFOiL, the foiling windsurfer, has been the Olympic windsurfing class since Paris 2024, so results at that LA venue carry extra weight.
Last month went badly. Bright fell ill shortly before the senior iQFOiL World Championships in Weymouth, England, and finished 19th. Bilger won bronze there, her first podium for Australia.
"It was really heartbreaking getting so sick just before the Worlds, which was definitely my peak event of the year," Bright said. "I was determined to try and do my best here and sort of redeem myself."
She has the family pedigree for it. Her mother, Barbara Kendall, competed at five Olympic Games between 1992 and 2008, winning sailboarding gold in Barcelona, silver in Atlanta in 1996 and bronze at Sydney 2000, RNZ reported. Her uncle, Bruce Kendall, won bronze at the 1984 Los Angeles Games and gold at Seoul in 1988.
If Bright makes the 2028 team, she'll be racing for a medal in the same city where her uncle won his first.
There was no big celebration in Puck. "I will celebrate by packing up... I'm packing up everything to fly home tomorrow," she said. Bright has spent almost two and a half months away on her international campaign with coach Paul Snow-Hansen.
She'll train in New Zealand for the next two months and may race Sail Melbourne in December. Her next major target is the 2027 World Sailing Combined World Championship in Brazil, scheduled for early January.