Another year has passed, and I’ve just about had enough of your “Hey, Mr. President” jokes that I’ve had to listen to throughout the year. Life is brutal (as one of my favorite Polish sayings goes), but the windsurfing community is one of the very few islands of normality still left in today’s world. IWA organised many memorable events and participations all around the worlds is growing.
We take the sport seriously, but not too seriously. We can fight to the last drop of sweat on the water, yet still enjoy a beer on the beach and have a good laugh at our imperfections. We all come from different backgrounds and have our own problems, but on the weekends, we become big kids again, playing our favorite game.
We judge each other by what we do, not by what we promise, post, or “like” in the digital world. The world is evolving, and my generation may be becoming the dinosaurs in the era of artificial intelligence. But are we really? Is it really time to give up the old-fashioned values of life just to just become popular? Is high performance—“if you want to play, you have to pay”—really more important than weekend fun with friends with 12 races and 2 discards? Is it really so humiliating for the young to take it step by step, learning from the masters of the sport before they become champions? I personally lean toward the old-fashioned values of Coubertin rather than a 400-meter-per-day scrolling competition winners.
What I really want to say is thank you to all of you—not only for this year. I wish I had had the chance to ask Ceri here and there what we were supposed to do, but then I realized all he did was listen to those speaking with passion about the sport they love.
So let’s do that again in 2026. Good luck, IWA. Good luck to the new Mr. President in office.
Air to breathe, wind to live.
