Big Air world champion took eighth title after year off but felt no pressure as she had ‘nothing to prove’
Brazil’s Mikaili Sol lifted the 2025 GKA Big Air Kite World Championship crown with her win at Lords of Tram, in France, in March. It was her eighth world title on her comeback to competition after almost a year out to regroup. Sol, 20, set up base in Tarifa, Spain, earlier this year to prepare. Shortly after adding the Big Air crown to her trophy haul, she talked to Lewis Crathern on the Inside the World of Duotone podcast about the event that was blasted by 65 knots Tramontana winds, the pressures and her next goals.
Lewis Crathern: You had quite a big break from competition. Did you go into this event feeling like you were going to take the win and become world champion again for the eighth time?
MIkaili Sol: I’m not one who enjoys going out when it’s super, super strong. I like Big Air. I don’t like ‘extreme air’. I was definitely nervous and feeling the jitters after taking that year off. I just had to go into reset mode and get my groove back. Then just go into it with a clear mind, not putting too much pressure on myself. I just need to go out there and do what I have to do, get the scores on the board and that’s it. I don’t have to prove myself again because in the end, I don’t have anything to prove. I just needed to go out there and do what I can do. And if that was good enough, that was good enough. But not pushing my limits to the point where I’m thinking, ‘I’ve had a year off, people are doubting me’. I’d no need to over-prove myself because that’s just not the right way to go into competition.
LC: Before you go into an event do you consider how it’s going to go?
MS: I go into every event with a kind of respect. I know if I do the tricks that I can do, I have the potential to win. But anything can go wrong, and everything can go right. It just depends how your mindset is and how you’re feeling and if you give it your all and you know that you’re capable of winning, then you’re going to be going into an event fully prepared.
I think this event [Lords of Tram] I had that feeling where if I get the scores on the board, I can do it, it’s going to run smoothly. I wasn’t actually feeling so prepared for this event. Living in Tarifa . . . we didn’t get so much wind. I moved here in January, and from January till the comp, I think I only had three or four proper Big Air sessions and I was feeling a little stuck after not riding for so long. Previously, riding in Brazil with warm wind, that’s different conditions and different feelings. So getting back into it was definitely challenging. But in competition everything changes . . . once that buzzer goes off. You’re just gonna go out and do exactly what you have to do.
’Environment is everything’
LC: I’m always interested to hear what the top athletes are doing to be prepared physically. Mikaili, what sort of training techniques and routines are you doing in the gym?
MS: My training . . . I try to be consistent in the gym and just do full body stuff. I wouldn’t say I’m going full out on the gym every week, every day. If there’s wind, if you overtrain, you get tired and you have to put your priorities straight. But I think you just have to have like a good mix between training on the water and off the water just to prevent injuries and to just feel 100 percent when you do go on the water.
LC: What do you do to unwind and relax?
MS: Being in the right environment, being around certain people, brings you that kind of peace and calm that you need. Your environment is everything. So, for me, living in Tarifa, it just gives me a sense of peace because you can do so many things outside of just riding. So when there’s no wind, you can go to the beach, or the gym, or go for a hike or just hang out with friends and that’s just makes me feel like I’m in a good space; in a healthy space, mentally, and that just provides me with the energy that I need to grow.
LC: Is there anybody that’s really influenced you and inspired you? And maybe how they might have shaped your professional path?
MS: Everything inspires me, in a sense. Just seeing people pushing their limits inspires me. It just inspires me how some people have different routines, but get to the same place. It isn’t really matter how you do it, as long as you get it done. That’s just something that when I see people achieve what they work so hard for, it makes me want to do the same thing and to keep improving and keep pushing it.
‘Just have fun’
LC: Handling pressure. Mikaili let’s put you in an actual position. I want to know how you handled the pressure before that [Lords of Tram] final knowing that your return to competitive kiteboarding would be what was talked about and knowing that the outcome of that final would give you another the world championship, for your eighth time, or not. How did you manage that pressure?
MS: To be quite honest, competing for such a long time, you learn to deal with the pressure in different ways. For me the way I’ve found to be the best is to go into the water and just have fun. Because if you put too much pressure on yourself, you’re going to mess up. Too much pressure is never good for anyone. Sometimes pressure is good when you’re training and when you’re competing in the first few rounds. But when you get to that final, you just need to be calm in your mind. You can’t really put all this expectation on yourself because then usually you try to go for it too much and then you mess up and then you start crashing.
LC: What are some of your goals or aspirations moving forwards in your in your kiteboarding career?
MS: My future goals short-term are definitely the win King of the Air. It’s the only competition I haven’t won yet. So it would be pretty awesome to win that. Last year I didn’t attend because it was more like a test. It wasn’t officially the Queen of the Air. So this year definitely my goal is to train and to win that. Past that, I think it is just to push myself as much as I can and try to obtain a higher level of kiting, and in my personal life and everything.
edit: Ian MacKinnon
images: Andy Troy / Svetlana Romantsova