From the start, it was clear that Maximilian Maeder had found his perfect match in kitefoiling.
He was introduced to kiteboarding by his father Valentin when he was six, before making the switch to kitefoiling four years later and he quickly realised that his love for kitefoiling was not fleeting.
He said: “That feeling of freedom, flight and of gliding over the surface of the water immediately captured me.
The moment I got up when I felt that balance, when I felt that speed, when I felt how smooth that was, I knew I was going to be doing this for a while.
But it was not just the thrill and speed that appealed to Maximilian.
His affinity for the sport was also built on a love for racing and a relentless pursuit to be better.
“I guess the sport was made for me because I like to look at things very technically, and I like to compete, I like to race and all of those put together in a water sport was really the right thing for me,” he said.
Maximilian’s competitive nature and aversion to losing was apparent by the time he was four, when he began participating in ski races.
He was already constantly thinking of ways to improve, a trait that has remained with him to this day. It has also helped make him one of the world’s best kitefoilers at just 17.
He is a two-time world champion and has won every title on offer in 2024, making him one of the favourites for the gold at the Paris Olympics, where kitefoiling will be making its debut.
“He has a little bit more of everything as compared to other kitefoilers, he doesn’t like to lose, his will for winning is really big and he will do everything to achieve his goal,” said his coach Johnny Dolenc, who has been working with Maximilian since he was 14.
He wants to be champion and he’s using a smart way to become one. He analyses a lot, he thinks a lot, this is his goal and he’s living kitefoiling, he’s living racing.
Maximilian’s dedication to the sport was clear to the Croat when he started coaching him four years ago, and his desire to win was strong even in training.
The 55-year-old said: “He always listened and wanted to do more, I couldn’t find a weak point when I started working with Max.”
A lot of practice races are run during training to expose Maximilian to different situations he may encounter in a regatta.
This is crucial as split-second decisions can prove the difference between victory and defeat, with plenty going on in a race and athletes moving at speeds of up to 80kmh.
Take for example the second race of the final at the 2023 Sailing World Championships. The stakes were high, with reigning champion Toni Vodisek and Maximilian, who was seeking his maiden senior world crown, just one win away from the title.
It was a close battle at the front between Frenchman Axel Mazella, Vodisek and Maximilian up till the end of the second leg of the race.
However, as they rounded the second mark of the course at over 46kmh, Vodisek, who was just ahead of Maximilian, made a mistake and crashed. The Singaporean, in wanting to avoid running over his Slovenian rival, had to rely on his intuition and he intentionally tumbled into the water himself.
Both of them did not go on to win that race, although Maximilian eventually clinched the title.
These calls in races are instinctive, honed by hours of practice and analysis. While Dolenc creates these race simulations, Maximilian is often the one finding the solutions to these different scenarios.
He is not just concerned about winning races. How he wins is even more important and is determined by factors like the number of races he can win consistently, how he did it and how comfortable it was.
He backs this up with Global Positioning System data to determine how his performance was, breaking it down to see what worked and what could be improved.
One data set he looks at is the average speed of a tack achieved when using different approaches in similar conditions.
Comparing this data helps Maximilian understand what techniques enable him to hit the highest average speed, and he puts it into practice.
“There's also a lot of brainstorming going on because you want to think about how exactly you increase those numbers. It's not just randomly trying things out,” he said.
Much of mastering his craft involves constantly reviewing and poring over data, but Maximilian also draws inspiration from things outside of sport, such as how Google’s AlphaGo programme outperformed humans – including the world’s top-ranked player – in the ancient Chinese board game of Go by opting for safer strategies, even if that resulted in narrower victories.
That is applicable to kitefoiling too, when certain situations call for more conservative strategies.
Another strong source of motivation for Maximilian is to use his expertise to positively impact those around him.
While the Olympics are a major event for him, he stressed that it is not the end goal.
He elaborated: “It's one that cannot be completed or not be left uncompleted. I’ve said this many times before, it’s slowly shifted into seeing the dedication, the effort and the work I've put into improving and doing well and seeing it affect others in a positive way.
“The family is happy, friends enjoy watching, the way you can bring positivity and spread it through your own work is a very fulfilling thing. You share joy and positivity just by putting in the work and effort and continuing to do that is the goal – staying diligent, staying disciplined, staying on top.”