July 22, 2024
4 minutes reading time
Marseille to mark next step in the incredible story of Daniela Moroz
It may have seemed inevitable that Daniela Moroz would become a force to be reckoned with on the water but the odds of her mere existence defy most probabilities.
With six consecutive Formula Kite World Championships titles to her name before the age of 22, a picture is painted of over-achievement and high performance in the women’s kite event.
The 23-year-old grew up in San Francisco taking after her windsurfing parents, who both left communist Czechoslovakia before meeting for the first time through the sport on the other side of the world.
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Refugee camps in Belgrade, a tourist ski trip to Yugoslavia and a move to Moroz’s birthplace all led to her parents getting married in 1993.
The rest is history, as they say, but the story of Moroz’s parents is just as crucial to her rise as it is to their own narrative.
Runs in the family
Linda Moser and Vlad Moroz were never meant to meet.
In 1983, a 19-year-old woman from outside Prague and a Czech man in his mid-20s, two scholars both unknown to each other, conjured up plans to escape communist rule and its propaganda.
The pair both ended up in separate refugee camps in Austria, Moser getting past soldiers at the Yugoslavia-Austria border while Vlad Moroz purposely left his ski group during a tourist trip to Italy.
Next stop: the other side of the world – America. It was Moser who made it to the Bay Area first through a friend’s uncle before Vlad made the move over from Texas.
Of course, both Moser and Moroz met through a Czech community of windsurfers.
It is perhaps no surprise that Daniela’s mother, while pregnant, raced the San Francisco Classic in 2000, a 20-mile zig-zag of the bay – and no wonder her daughter found a natural knack on fickle winds and waves.
Rapid rise
Nicknamed ‘copycat’ as a child by a ski instructor, it soon became clear that Moroz was different to her peers in a way that only elite athletes can be.
She tried many sports as a child, but it was kiteboarding that captured her heart at 11 years old.
By 14, kite racing was more than just a hobby and there was nothing stopping Moroz taking it to the next level, competing in her first international event.
In 2016, at just 15 years of age, the surfing starlet won her first World Championship and was awarded the US Rolex Yachtswoman of the Year award as its youngest, only female and only second kiteboarder recipient.
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She said: “The Bay Area was literally the birthplace of kite racing.
“The San Francisco Bay Area is notoriously one of the most difficult venues to sail at in the world.
“If you can sail there, and if you can perform well there, you can do that anywhere.”
Burning out
By 2022, it became unthinkable that Moroz would not make a podium. Win after win, title after title, she tore down her opponents at every opportunity.
When you become known by statistics, six consecutive World Championships titles and undefeated in as many years, it seems impossible that anything can go wrong.
But all her glory on the water merely scratched the surface for Moroz. Constant travel and intense training led to burnout, something she would have to use her run-in to Paris 2024 to try and curb.
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In 2023, she went from training in Mexico to Switzerland to the Trofea Sofia Regatta in Palma, missing the podium for fourth in Spain – the unthinkable had happened.
She did subsequently manage to secure an Olympic quota spot, but burnout hit, and hard, after a fifth-place finish at the World Championships in The Hague.
She said: “Despite this nagging feeling of lacking motivation, I kept pushing and kept grinding.
“I thought I was just pushing myself in a good way.
“I feel like I’ve always been told that if I work harder and put more hours in than my competitors, then I’ll automatically come out with better results, right? This couldn’t be more inaccurate.”
History to be made
Moroz took a break from her University of Hawaii classic for this Olympic year and knows if she takes gold, she will be the first US sailor to do so since Anna Tunnicliffe in 2008.
She missed out on defending and regaining her World Championships crown last year and finished seventh-place in Hyeres in May.
But, in the fastest discipline across the entire Olympics, fresh from some soul searching and recuperating, Moroz knows anything is possible in Paris 2024 and beyond.
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She said: “Everything I do and have been doing the last several years is to give myself a shot at a medal.
“At the Olympics I want to deliver my best possible performance and I know I’m capable of winning a gold medal if I do my best.
“It would mean everything to me and my family and to bring a gold home to the US after we’ve really struggled as a nation the last few Games’ would be really special.
“I just want to keep enjoying it and keep racing for as long as possible. I am definitely thinking about LA 2028 since it will be a home Games.”