Slingshot is extremely excited to welcome 2x world champion Edo Tanas to the Slingshot Foil team.

Edo Tanas grew up on Lake Garda, forged by wind before most kids figure out balance. Windsurfing at eight. European and World Championship level soon after. When COVID shut down the circuit, he moved to Hawaii and found downwind foiling. The ocean didn’t just test him, it unlocked him. Two-time Molokaʻi 2 Oʻahu World Champion. Back-to-back Maui to Molokaʻi winner. 2024 Triple Crown champ. All by 23. Now he’s pushing the next generation of One-Lock foils with Slingshot Sports. Wind built him. The channel refined him. Foiling is just the language he speaks fluently.

True Athletes and Ocean Readers

When Edo Tanas won the title in 2025, he demonstrated mastery of something far subtler than strength or balance. Winning the 2025 Men’s SUP Foil Championship in downwind foiling means conquering the near-impossible, turning chaos into a readable language. Downwind foiling is not brute force. It’s fluid dynamics plus instinct. Wind transfers energy into the surface of the ocean. That energy organizes into moving pressure gradients. Bumps, troughs, runners. The rider’s job is to detect the most efficient energy lines and stitch them together without stalling. For a guy like Edo, it’s like surfing an invisible conveyor belt.

Fishing and downwinding are cognitively similar activities.

When the wind is whipping, Edo is downwinding. When the waves are firing, he is surfing. Any other time, he is probably fishing. When you fish, you’re not just tossing a line. You’re reading surface texture, bird behavior, bait movement, tide flow, temperature shifts. You’re solving a real-time ecological equation. Birds diving? That’s predation. The slick patch on the water? That might be bait being pushed up. The subtle color changes? Maybe depth variation. Downwinding works the same way. You read micro-textures in the water. You feel acceleration through your feet. You predict which bump will link into the next one before it visually peaks.

The best riders aren’t reacting, they’re forecasting the future.

That’s ocean literacy and it’s adaptive intelligence. The ocean punishes ego quickly. Every skilled waterman eventually learns reverence. Being “all in” doesn’t mean fighting the ocean. It means surrendering to its physics while committing completely to the line you choose.

When Slingshot Sports says they want to push what’s possible, that’s not marketing fluff.

Paired with athletes who genuinely understand energy transfer, foil design, and water reading. Progress in foiling is incremental hydrodynamics: mast stiffness, wing aspect ratio, lift-to-drag ratios, ventilation resistance. But the rider is still the final sensor array.

Here’s something beautiful: the ocean as a reset button.

It isn’t mystical, it’s neurological. Immersion in natural environments lowers cortisol, stabilizes heart rate variability, and shifts the nervous system toward parasympathetic dominance. The “rest and restore” mode. Saltwater therapy is not poetry; it’s physiology.

No static. No noise. Just flow state.

Being able to “read the ocean” might be the best feeling in the world because it represents total alignment between mind, body, and external energy. And that’s the deeper myth here. The ocean doesn’t care about titles. It rewards presence. Championships fade, but legends never die.

Forget the rules.

There are no rules. Rules were made to be broken, and he who breaks the rules sets the standard.

Edo's One-Lock Set Up

Check out the One-Lock Foil Collection:

FRONT WINGS

Check out this downwind maverick:

LASER CRAFT

See you on the water!