Kevin and Kaden Pritchard- Wing Foil interview- Blue Planet Show #14

Aloha friends. It's Robert Stehlik, welcome to another episode of the blue planet show.  On this show I interview Wing Foil athletes, not only about the technique and the gear that they use, but I also try to get to know them a little bit better, their background, what makes them tick, what inspires them and how they live their best life.

It's a long form format. So if you'd like in-depth information, then you're going to love this show.  I really appreciate you. I know not everyone has time to watch it on YouTube with the visuals. I think it's great, but you can, of course, also listen to it as a podcast with audio only, just search your favorite podcast app for "the blue planet show".  Today's interview is with Kevin and Kaden Pritchard.

Kevin Pritchard is a multiple time wind surf world champion. Him and his brother, both Matt Pritchard and Matt's son, Kaden is 12 years old and he's only been winging for about a year. And he's already doing crazy moves: back flips and he's working on forward flips and he breaks down technique for me on the Flaka, which really helped me out too.

So there's some really good stuff in here. And just the whole story about the Pritchard family living on Maui, basically because a friend gave a wind surf board to Kevin's dad. So that's what led to the whole family living that lifestyle now. So I thought that was great. Really interesting story. Good to see the two generations together and hope you enjoy this show as much as I did.

And without further ado, please welcome the Pritchards!  Okay. Kevin and Kaden Prichard. Welcome to the Blue Planet Show. Thanks so much for making some time to join me. How you guys doing today? Yeah, thanks for having us. I was like, checking you out on that. On the internet and it's oh, let's do something.

Could be cool. We've got Kaden who's starting to really start to rip on the wing foil. And yeah. That's cool. Yeah. Thanks for reaching out to me. I appreciate that. And and I saw you, you just started a YouTube channel and blogging and all that kind of stuff too. So I always like to collaborate with other people that try to create content and stuff like that.

So it's great to have you guys, and you're both on Nali right now, right? And where are you at? It looks like you got a lot of gear behind you. There we are in my dad's workshop or yeah, his dad. We have a little rental. Wind surfing thing. So renting the waves and stuff over here on Maui. And my brother does a lot of lessons teaching, wind surfing.

And he's been, has he been teaching leaning to a little bit Kayden? So your dad is Kevin's brother. That's how you relate okay. What's your dad's name? Okay. And then Kevin you been a long time windsurfer multiple time world champion and stuff like that. So then what, can you talk a little bit about your career actually, let's start with where you grew up and how you got into it and all that kind of stuff.

Yeah. I grew up in California and actually my brother and I, we started windsurfing together with my parents and my mom and my dad. And like we all used to travel around, we'd go to hood river and we lived in California, so we just started my dad was addicted to it, so he just took us with us and just, we all fell in love with the sport and it was super fun and yeah, just started wind surfing all the time and we got into it and then my brother moved to Maui in 92.

I think it was. And then I moved in 94. And then we just started going, doing the world tour together and just like step-by-step got better and better. And then yeah, it was awesome. We, he won a bunch of world titles and I won some world titles. It's crazy how a sport can take you and change your life.

It's like we started in California together and now our whole family's here. And then he's had a family of two kids and it's pretty fun watching the Caden grow up to in the mix of, what we used to do as a family, go and wind surf and all this stuff. And his, my dad, his grandfather is I would say he's his biggest, person helping him go down to the beach and doing winging. And my dad's learned a wing and he's 70. So they go down together all the time and it's pretty cool. So we've got a family atmosphere that we've had all our lives and to see it getting passed down has been, it's been fun.

Cool. So how old are you now? I'm 45. And what about UK? 11. 11. All right. Cool. So how, when did you stop competing professionally as a windsurfer or are you still competing or no. I would say it's pretty cool. I won the law classic in 2000 and then I won it in 2017.

I think it was. 16 2016. So having I had a amazing career of 16 years of, still being, near the top. And that was one of my best moments was just, like 16 years later when it beaten these kids out who keep that was, it was special conditions with big waves and weird conditions, but still it was it was a good feeling to end your career on top and that