ROBBY SWIFT: A SWIFT FAREWELL!
ROBBY SWIFT: A SWIFT FAREWELL!
ROBBY SWIFT: A SWIFT FAREWEL!
After 25 years of putting his heart and soul into competing on the PWA / IWT wave tour, Robby Swift finally decided to quit doing the full tour at the end of this season. His farewell event was at the Aloha Classic in Maui, where he made the final and finished in 4th, a fitting testimony to many years of hard work and determination.
Although he’s closing the chapter on full-time competition, Robby isn’t hanging up his harness just yet. He’ll continue to push his limits at Ho’okipa, Jaws and big-wave spots around the globe, but with a renewed focus on family life and business ventures at home in Hawaii.
We caught up with Robby to talk about the decision, the journey and what comes next after a remarkable career on the world tour.
Photos: Erik Aeder, John Carter / PWA Fish Bowl Diaries / PWA / IWT
TOUGH DECISION
WINDSURF: How does it feel to be saying this year is your last full year on tour and now it is all done and dusted?
ROBBY SWIFT “It’s a kind of bitter-sweet feeling. I would love to continue to compete. It has been my passion and drive for the past 25+ years and I feel like I’m still improving every year, and would love to keep rolling the dice at everything going my way for a whole year during all the contests, but the sad reality is that it’s just impossible to continue to do this and dedicate enough time to it when I have a family that needs to be supported and considering the tough financial situation of the industry nowadays. I have lots of other fun and meaningful things in my life now and I need to look to the future and see the positive things about this decision but to be honest, I really wish I could just carry on competing forever!”
GRIM REALITY
WINDSURF: Why did you make the decision to make this, your last year on tour?
ROBBY SWIFT: “Honestly, it’s partly a financial decision and partly a decision based on the time and energy that it takes to prepare for the tour, which also ends up making a big financial impact on your life as it’s hard to work if you are spending 5 days a week driving over to the other side of the island to train for the Canaries!! And the final part is how many events there are now and how little compensation there is for the sailors nowadays. It all adds up to just not being financially viable to be a competitive windsurfer anymore, sadly. It has been so much fun just dedicating myself to this for so many years but this past year, I have been feeling that I have been neglecting my work responsibilities on Maui because of training so much. We leave at around 8:30am and don’t get home till after 5:30pm, so it really doesn’t leave time to do anything else in the day so you really have to be dedicated to keep doing that 4-5 times a week and the reality of it is that you need to be making money doing it too! It basically comes down on having decide if you either want to be a pro windsurfer and dedicate yourself fully to doing the tour or leave yourself time to do other work, in which case you really have to be responsible and do that!
The tour is so big now, with so many events all over the world that when you live in Maui and have to leave Maui to go to the events, it really costs $20-$25,000 or so just in travel costs, accommodation and rental cars / food etc. There are almost no brands nowadays inside the windsurfing industry who are able to cover those costs, let alone give you something on top of that to live on, and we still don’t seem to be at a point where companies outside the windsurfing bubble see our sport as a viable avenue to direct their marketing money into, so there is very little external sponsorship available and therefore basically no money at all for the riders. Also, to allow for the addition of the new events to the tour, the prize money has been reduced dramatically so that now most of the events have only $20,000 split equally between men and women, so it’s $10,000 for each gender, and you only get prize money if you come in the top 8. That’s down from 40,000 Euros a few years ago, and it went down to the top 16 so back then, it was possible to at least pay your plane ticked if you finished in the top 10. Now, you can’t really pay your plane ticket with prize money, even if you win the event, so it’s tough financially. If I didn’t have a family and kids to support, I would probably still carry on as I do believe things might be headed in the right direction towards improving in a few years but right now, it’s so tough that you basically end up the year with a big hole in your pocket, plus no time to do any other serious work during the rest of the year, so it’s just not really a viable ‘career’ any more, more of a very expensive hobby! But oh it’s so fun!!!
Another factor is that I feel like the way the events have been going has led to us having way too many participants in the events so they end up having to do such short heats and during times when the conditions can be really bad. It feels like this year, I spent so much time and energy training to end up getting to events where I had extremely short heats (often 12 minutes) where if I made one small mistake, it was all over, and you have flown 40 hours over to the other side of the world and spent $5,000 to get this chance and then it’s all over in a flash and you feel like you didn’t really get a chance to show what you can do. It just doesn’t feel like a productive use of my time and energy anymore, at least not at the moment when things are the way they are.
NEW VENTURE
Since all I really like doing is actually surfing and windsurfing, I am trying to steer my career into something that involves windsurfing heavily, hence my new Swift Watersports venture which is basically the distributorship of NeilPryde and JP in Hawaii, so I can still spend a lot of time windsurfing, but even that requires quite a lot of time to be spent actually doing work rather than just training all day, so in the end, without some kind of pretty big change in the sailors’ compensation for going to events and prize money for doing well in them, I think that more and more people are going to end up simply not being able to carry on competing. I do hope that this change will happen sometime soon as I would love for all the young, massively talented sailors to be able to make a career out of it (including my own children!!) but for the time being, I had to decide to head in another direction.”
WINDSURF: You finished with a bang in Maui, talk us through how the event went for you and how it felt to make the final?
ROBBY SWIFT: “Yes, I was really happy with that. I had made it to the final in the Maui Pro Am in the spring time, so I felt quite confident with my sailing level. In the spring we had jumps and my doubles helped me get through some heats, but now at the Aloha, we had to rely on pure wave riding and it was great to be able to make the final again without the jumps. Making the final was a really special moment for me. I had all my family on the beach, plus all the other kids who come surfing / windsurfing with us, so it was a really cool atmosphere. I had an insane heat in the semi-final and sadly couldn’t quite repeat the wave-selection part in the final, but I guess that still leaves me something to hope for in future years. I’ll definitely be doing the Maui events for the foreseeable future!”
WINDSURF: In the semis both yourself and Morgan were ripping…how did it feel to land those goiters and both yourself and Morgan make it through to the final for the JP / NeilPryde team?
ROBBY SWIFT: “It felt awesome. I have been friends and team-mates with Morgan for many years. We train together at the gym and on the water and he is one of the most dedicated and hardworking windsurfers on the planet (and he is the equal most successful ever at the Aloha Classic). I knew I had to give it my all in that semi and went for it right from the beginning. I landed pretty much everything and just felt like I was on a roll. It’s an incredible feeling when everything that you know you can do comes together in such a short period of time during a heat and to make it through with one of your close friends feels amazing. At the time, I felt bad for Marc as by knocking him out, we had opened up the possibility of him not winning his (very deserved) world title, but we had also opened up a chance for Braw to win another one, and seeing as our Maui training team consists of myself, Braw and Morgan, that felt pretty good!”
WINDSURF: What board and sails were you riding for the event and how tricky were the conditions?
ROBBY SWIFT: “I was on my regular 5.0 Combat Pro Fuse and a new JP shape that I have been working on with Werner which is kind of like a surfboard outline in a windsurf board. It’s 85L and really fun. I only received those boards right before the Aloha and had two days testing on them, during which I actually drove myself pretty crazy and wasn’t even sure whether I should use the new one or not, or just stick to my trusty 87 Ultimate Wave, but I stuck with it and I think that it worked out well, having looked at the footage!”
WINDSURF: It looked like you waited out the back in the final for the set waves…did that strategy work out?
ROBBY SWIFT: “Not at all! I was out there for the whole women’s final, right before our final, and watched set after set roll in and made a conscious decision not to go on any wave that wasn’t a bomb. It was so consistent in that women’s final that I was sure we would get plenty of sets in 25 minutes. As it turned out, there weren’t many sets at the start of the heat and then a rain squall killed the wind and turned it super off-shore. When a set finally came my way, the wind was so offshore that it just pushed me downwind, almost to Lanes and I wasn’t even able to catch it. At that point I only had 9 minutes left in the heat and was going crazy. I had to catch a couple of waves, so I took some average ones, sailed quite well, but basically the plan completely back-fired and I wish I had gone around that final in a different way. It’s hard to have a game plan not work out, but since it was a conscious decision to wait for the sets and then just that freak rain-squall that ruined the plan, I don’ think I can say the plan wasn’t a good one, it was just unlucky that it happened that way. Normally if you wait for the bombs, you end up getting best shot at getting the scores.”
WINDSURF: What was it like to have the family around you to share those emotional moments after finish the 2025 tour in such a special way?
ROBBY SWIFT: “That was the best thing about both the Maui Pro Am and the Aloha Classic. It was awesome having my family there and I was really happy to have been able to put on a performance I was proud of!”
WINDSURF: We are guessing you will still dip in and out of events like the Aloha as a wild card?
ROBBY SWIFT: “I’ll definitely do the Maui events and if they manage to pull off Fiji, I would do that one. I’m considering going to Chile but still waiting to see if I’m going to have a sponsorship contract next year and if so, what it will look like, so my decision will be mostly based on whether I can get the trip costs covered or not!”
LAST TIME
WINDSURF: How did it feel to do you last Pozo, Sylt etc?
ROBBY SWIFT: “Last time ever in Pozo was weird. It has been a central part of my year every year for the past 25 years. It’s actually the place (after Maui and the UK) where I have spent the longest duration of my life, and I have spent so much time and energy thinking about and training for that location. I love sailing there when it’s good but we have so many average days there, full of people all trying to do jumps down at the bunker with almost no waves that the majority of the sessions I had there were frustrating this year, and then in the event the wind was so strong that I could hardly sail in a straight line on my 3.3m!
So my final take away from the event was that I’m kind of happy I won’t have to go through the immense amount of pain and fear, injuries and concussions that you go through when trying to do push forwards and doubles and stuff in those crazy conditions. I’ll be very happy to watch Marino, Philip, Braw and Marc etc. push the level there and inspire the new younger generations to come!
LAST SYLT
Last time ever in Sylt was fun, we had a week of enjoying seeing friends there and we were lucky enough to stay for the first time in the Hotel Miramar which was s real experience! The contest conditions were so hard and I had another equipment failure in the shore break there which meant that I just missed out on passing into the top 5.
We were running ridiculously short heats of 12 minutes just to get the event finished so I didn’t have time to get out and get a 2 on a wave which was all I needed to pass through that heat.
So again, a frustrating last time ever there, but while floating around, getting pounded in the freezing shore break I looked at the beach and thought to myself that I will be happy to stick to warmer climates and more inspiring conditions from now on!”
WINDSURF: How tough were the conditions in Sylt this year?
ROBBY SWIFT: “Sylt was tough, as usual. But it was actually kind of fun in the moments when it was windy. I had my heat re-run 3 times in very average conditions and then it finally got really windy but the shore break was huge and they had to reduce the heats to 12 minutes to get it finished. I did a great double on my first run out in that heat and then just needed 2 average waves but I tried to hit a lip on the first wave I got, got completely creamed in the shore break, and broke a piece of my boom, and with the very short amount of time left, I didn’t have time to fix it or to get out and get another wave.”
WINDSURF: Will you miss these events of is there a chance you will be taking Rocco etc to compete in the juniors?
ROBBY SWIFT: “I think it will be a little while till Rocco needs to travel across the world and spend $5,000 going to an event that I’m not competing in anyway ???? so I think that we will be spending the next few summers looking for perfect waves and enjoying some family vacations that will be fun for the whole family. It’s actually my dream to convert my windsurfing sponsorship into more a travel-story based deal where I travel to great places and make videos / take photos for magazine articles so if that works out, then I hope to be able to take Rocco (and Felix) with me before long and we can be exploring insane waves together. I think that’s a pretty good dream, so I hope we can turn it into a reality!”
WINDSURF: What are your plans now you are not doing the tour full time?
ROBBY SWIFT: “I want to work on building up the NeilPryde and JP brands again in Maui and Hawaii and in the US. We have lost a lot of presence here and the gear is way better than it has ever been, so I see no reason why we can’t bring it back to its former glory! It’s a fun mission for me, and still keeps me very much involved with what I love most about windsurfing which is pushing my progress on the water and therefore, pushing the level and performance of the equipment. I have partnered with Nils Rosenblad who is the designer of the NeilPryde wings and Robert Stroj, designer of the NeilPryde sails, is also about to join our partnership so I think we will have a very strong team here, all looking towards the future and with a vested interest in creating absolutely the most cutting edge gear possible. It’s actually really exciting for me and almost exciting enough to take away the sadness of stopping competing!
YOUNG GENERATION
I love coaching my kids and other kids, so I’ll continue doing that. We get together on at least one Sunday every month at Kahului harbour and get lots of kids in the water, plus there are some other young kids on Maui who are getting really good so I help coach them with video review and tips etc. I also do one clinic per year for adults and may expand that to two clinics a this is something that gives me a lot of satisfaction and helps me spread the word about our products so I feel like my life is going to deviate off into that direction. For sure though I’m still 100% focused on training for big waves and quality waves at Ho’okipa and beyond and any epic contest that comes on the map (Cabo Verde, Fiji etc.) I would be keen to attend!”
WINDSURF: Obviously you will carry on wave sailing but without having to train for Sylt and Pozo will this change your sailing to just riding at Ho’okipa?
ROBBY SWIFT: “There will be a lot more Ho’okipa days I think!! I did dedicate an awful lot of my time to preparing for those other conditions and that is one thing that really pleases me about this new chapter. I missed tons of good Ho’okipa days to go to the other spots, and I also love doing things like downwind SUP foiling which I don’t do much because I’m normally training on the other side of the island when it’s good for that. So, I think I’ll just be focusing myself on things that I really truly enjoy from now on and trying to get better at those things. For sure I’ll still be jumping and doing push forwards and doubles etc. But I will only do them when the wave is right and won’t force myself to do things when I might get a massive back slap. Kind of picking the cream of the conditions to do the funnest stuff, without having to do that extra huge amount of work to make sure I’m prepared to be able to do things in any conditions during a contest. Sounds like quite a lot of fun when I think of it like this!”
WINDSURF: Will you carry on doing the training with Sarha Hauser etc
ROBBY SWIFT: “100%. I think it’s so important to keep yourself fit and healthy. I sail or surf at least 6 times a week and always in pretty heavy conditions. When we have Jaws swells I want to be 100% on my game, so I’ll be training for sure. It’s so hard on your body to do the goiters, 360s, doubles etc. that you have to be in peak physical condition otherwise you risk getting injured and having to spend lots of time off the water.”
WINDSURF: Where do you see yourself in ten years time?
ROBBY SWIFT: “Hopefully with quite a nice NeilPryde and JP business getting excellent gear to happy customers across the US, doing a couple of clinics a year, plus helping kids get into windsurfing. I would like to be coaching my kids and any other of the talented local kids who are into surfing and windsurfing and trying to help them be the best athletes they can be, and I would really love for Swift Watersports to grow into a business that can keep my kids here on Maui with me and not needing to go flying off somewhere else in the world in pursuit of a job! We have such a nice setup here on Maui where we can surf and windsurf in the early mornings and afternoons and work hard during the middle of the day, that my main focus now is just on enjoying that to the max and spending as much time as possible with my family while the kids are at such a fun young age, then keeping them entertained and motivated to work and have fun in the water as they grow into young adults!”
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