Finian Maynard (born 22 November 1974 in Dublin, Ireland) is a six-time speed windsurfing world champion (1998 - 2001, 2006 and 2009) and held the absolute 500m sailing speed record for all sailing vessels from late 2004 until early 2008.
He went to the British Virgin Islands with his parents at the age of 5, hence his sail number KV11 resp. BVI11. When he was 7, he tried windsurfing for the first time and at the age of 15, he came 13th at the US Open at Corpus Christi, Texas. His career choice had been made.
Finian Maynard is 190cm (6ft 3in) tall and weighs 117kg (258lb). This is widely seen as a good build for a speed sailor, giving him the strength and power to achieve high speeds. On 13 November 2004 he established a new speed world record for sailing vessels by reaching 46.82 knots in the French Trench near Saintes Maries de la Mer, surpassing the speed set in 1993 at Sandy Point Australia by Simon McKeon and the boat Yellow Pages.
He improved his record a half year later, reaching 48.70 knots. Both records were acknowledged and ratified by the World Sailing Speed Record Council.
In August 2009 in Karpathos, Greece he became the 2009 World Speed Champion, and was also the 2009 Vice-World Slalom Champion on the PWA World Tour.
In 2019 Finian Maynard started his own windsurfing brand, FMX Racing.
Windsurfing is a wind propelled water sport that is a combination of sailing and surfing. It is also referred to as "sailboarding" and "boardsailing", and emerged in the late 1960s from the Californian aerospace and surf culture. Windsurfing gained a popular following across Europe and North America by the late 1970s and had achieved significant global popularity by the 1980s. Windsurfing became an Olympic sport in 1984.
World Sailing (WS) is the world governing body for the sport of sailing recognized by the International Olympic Committee and the International Paralympic Committee (IPC).
Speed sailing is the art of sailing a craft as fast as possible over a predetermined route, and having its overall or peak speed recorded and accredited by a regulatory body. The term usually refers to sailing on water, even though sailing on land and ice is progressively faster because of the lower friction involved. The World Sailing Speed Record Council is the body authorized by the World Sailing to confirm speed records of sailing craft on water.
Land sailing, also known as sand yachting, land yachting or dirtboating, entails overland travel with a sail-powered vehicle, similar to sailing on water. Originally, a form of transportation or recreation, it has evolved primarily into a racing sport since the 1950s.
Formula Windsurfing is the high-performance, competitive course-racing format of the windsurfing world. This type of sailing boards enjoy a massive wind range that enables racing in winds from 7 to 35 knots, and are capable of reaching speeds of over 30 knots.
Allison Shreeve is an Australian athlete who was the PWA World Tour Champion 2004 and Formula World Windsurfing Champion in 2005, 2006 and 2007.
Robert Staunton Naish is an American athlete and entrepreneur who has won 24 World Championship Windsurfing titles. He is also considered a pioneer of kiteboarding and standup paddleboarding.
A sailing hydrofoil, hydrofoil sailboat, or hydrosail is a sailboat with wing-like foils mounted under the hull. As the craft increases its speed the hydrofoils lift the hull up and out of the water, greatly reducing wetted area, resulting in decreased drag and increased speed. A sailing hydrofoil can achieve speeds exceeding double and in some cases triple the wind speed.
Bjørn Dunkerbeck is a professional windsurfer who has won the Professional Windsurfers Association (PWA) Overall World Championships a record 42 times.
Hydroptère is a French experimental sailing hydrofoil trimaran imagined by the yachtman Éric Tabarly. The Hydroptère project was managed by Alain Thébault, the design done by naval architects VPLP design and the manufacturing by a group of French high-tech companies. Its multihull hydrofoil design allows the sail-powered vessel to reach high speeds on water. The design is based on experience from a range of hydrofoil sailcraft that Thébault built in cooperation with Éric Tabarly since the 1980s. On 5 October 2008 she reached a record speed of 52.86 knots, however this was over a shorter distance than the 500m necessary to qualify for an official world record. On 21 December 2008, the Hydroptère briefly reached 56.3 knots near Fos-sur-Mer, but capsized and turtled shortly thereafter.
Yellow Pages Endeavour, or YPE, is an Australian sailboat designed for speed sailing, which held the outright 500 meter world record from October, 1993 to November, 2004, when it was taken by windsurfer Finian Maynard; Yellow Pages Endeavour still holds the C class record. Yellow Pages Endeavour has been succeeded in record attempts by the similarly designed Extreme 50, renamed Macquarie Innovation, built and operated by the same team.
The International Speed Windsurfing Class (ISWC) is a class of speed windsurfing boards that has developed over the last 30 years in order to facilitate high performance competition in strong winds and on flat water. The International Speed Windsurfing Class is controlled by World Sailing and has been adopted as an international class in spring 2007. The class is defined as an "experimental" class, which means that the class rules give a wide possibility for the development of new equipment, also outside commonly used technologies. Speed windsurfing events are normally held on "flat water" as opposed to coastal surf; which means side-offshore wind directions with a strength of at least 20 knots (10 m/s). The ISWC speed world champion is established throughout a tour, the Speed World Cup.
Antoine Albeau is a French windsurfer who holds twenty-four Windsurfing World Championships in different disciplines since 1994.
The Saintes Maries de la Mer Speed Canal, known to windsurfers as The Canal, is a man-made canal or trench near the French Mediterranean coastal town Saintes Maries de la Mer, built especially for speed record-breaking sailing by windsurfers.
Michael William "Gebi" Gebhardt is a former professional and Olympic windsurfer from the United States, who competed in five consecutive Summer Olympics, in the Olympic sailing discipline/event of windsurfing. He was born in Columbus, Ohio.
The Lüderitz Speed Challenge is an annual speed sailing event, held since 2007 in Lüderitz, Namibia, during the southern hemisphere spring. It is observed by the World Sailing Speed Record Council (WSSRC) and the International Sailing Federation (ISAF).
Zara Davis is an English windsurfer. She holds the outright World Women's Nautical Mile speed record for a sailing vessel. The record was achieved in Namibia in 2006 and ratified by the World Sailing Speed Record Council. She has since improved this record for the Nautical Mile to 37.29 knots at La Plame in the South of France. Ratified by the World Sailing Speed Record Council.
Sean O'Brien is an Australian professional windsurfer competing on the PWA World Tour and the International Formula Windsurfing Class Tour. He was ranked 7th in the World in Formula Windsurfing in 2012 and has won 11 Australian Windsurfing Titles across three racing disciplines, the most of any Australian windsurfer.
Lena Aylin Erdil is a professional windsurfer from İzmir, Turkey. She is competing in the PWA World Tour mostly in the slalom event. She is currently sponsored by NRV, Starboard Windsurfing, Point7, Salzbrenner Würstchen and FGH.
Christian Bornemann is a German Windsurfer. He held 2014–2018 the German speed record over 500-meter, and since 2018 the German speed record over the nautical mile and is one of the twenty fastest windsurfers in the world.
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