Rising Stars: Nathan Berger, the 17-year-old wingfoiler beating his heroes

This is the first in our Rising Stars series, on the young athletes in sailing and foiling who are making the rest of the field sit up and take notice.

Last week in Leucate, at the season-opening stop of the GWA Wing Foil World Tour, Nathan Berger knocked out several of the sport's top names – including the reigning world champion – on his way to a debut final. Currently ranked 15th in the world, he finished fourth. When we caught up a few days later, Nathan was celebrating his 17th birthday. He’s certainly not wasting any time.

Wingfoil freestyle sits at the noisier, more acrobatic end of the foiling world. It’s not exactly like racing, but the equipment, the physical demands and the mental game of competing at the top of the sport will all be familiar to a sailing audience. And Nathan, who lives and trains in Tarifa at the southern tip of Spain where the Atlantic meets the Mediterranean, is a case study in what it takes to build a career on the water from scratch.

In Nathan’s case, that career began almost by accident. His dad had taken up wingfoiling a few years earlier, and one afternoon he came in from the water exhausted, left his gear on the sand and walked away. His 12-year-old son was watching. "I saw people winging around me and I thought, ‘I'm going to try,’" Nathan tells The Foil, "I just took it and flew away. I learned that day on my own." Two hours of crashing later, he was foiling out and back. He couldn't gybe, couldn't really stop, so he kept going, clearly a natural. His dad watched from the shore, apparently speechless. They've been on the water together almost every day since.

What Tarifa offers, Nathan explains, is not just consistent wind but variety. Conditions there can mimic Brazil one week and northern France the next. "Some people can be insanely good in strong wind," he says, "but then if they get light conditions in a competition, they are blocked and they don't know what to do." That range of experience, he believes, gives him a meaningful edge, one that delivered his second Spanish championship title in nearby Chiclana just weeks ago.

Away from the water he brings that same adaptability. When Leucate's wind went AWOL for the first half of the week, he grabbed a skateboard or an electric foil and got on with enjoying himself. While many athletes at the top levels have visualisation routines, pre-competition rituals, structured mental preparation, Nathan's approach is almost the opposite. "What works best for me is not to think about it," he says. "If I train my mental state too much I get more nervous. When I don't train too much, I'm chill. And when I'm chill, I'm more confident and I feel like I can do more."

Staying healthy, he'll tell you, is as much a competitive advantage as anything he does on the water. He goes to the gym, sleeps well, limits time on the water, all while balancing his school studies. "My mentality is just to not get injured," he says, "because that’s what allows you to keep progressing. It’s what makes you better than others."

Then there's the board. Nathan recently had his own pro model launched by KT Foiling – the same brand whose chief shaper, Keith Teboul, works with all-round watersports legend Kai Lenny. What's interesting is that the impetus didn't come from KT's design team. The company’s background is in speed and wave performance, but Nathan had a completely different set of needs. "As a freestyler, we don't care how fast the board goes in planing," he explains. "I like when you do a trick and you don't get stuck in the water – you're wingfoiling as if you’d never done a jump. The [existing] boards weren’t really meant for that, so I told them I was looking for something wider and shorter.” None of KT's other athletes had ever come to them with a brief like it. A year of prototypes, testing and iteration later, and the finished board is now on the market with his name on it.

Nathan is candid about where the current ceiling is. To take the next step, he needs to unlock what he calls the "crazy factor" – more risk, more commitment in the air. But he won't be rushed into it. "If you go crazy and you do it well, it goes really well," he says. "But it can go really badly, too. So I'm taking that step by step." Ask him what advice he'd give to anyone who wants to follow in his path, and he has a considered answer: "Do it your way. Figure out how you do things, because everybody’s different.”

After Leucate, Nathan is fourth in the overall standings after one event. He heads next to Tarifa – his home break – knowing the conditions better than almost anyone out there. "I'm so stoked," he said after last week’s final. "Beating all these guys I looked up to since I was starting – getting into that final – is insane with the level there is right now." He knows what he wants from the rest of the season. "That's my biggest goal of course," he says when asked about the number one spot. "I don't know if I will achieve it, but I will do everything to get there."

At 17, Nathan is already playing a longer game than most, and from where we’re sitting, it looks like he’s just warming up. Watch this space.

Photography © Celtia Rebolledo Heil @celtia__