Valentin Bontus: From Class Clown to Olympic Champion

However, his ambitions shifted when the fun-loving Austrian, the self-confessed class clown, discovered a new level of speed at the Allianz Sailing World Championships at The Hague in August a year ago. Having recently changed his foil package to a different brand, Bontus was flying. 

The crowd on Scheveningen Beach was going crazy when Bontus made it through to the four-rider final. “If Valentin can do it, maybe I can do it,” was the feeling from the other riders who had failed to make it that far in the competition.

Bontus finished fourth behind the top three well established names – Singapore’s Max Maeder winning the world title with Slovenia’s Toni Vodisek in silver and bronze for France’s Axel Mazella. The Austrian had exceeded everyone’s expectations including his own. Not only had he qualified his nation for a place at the Games, Bontus started to wonder if what he had achieved in The Hague might be the start of something new.

So it proved, with Bontus consistently finishing in the top few of the major regattas during the past year. However the 17-year-old from Singapore, Maeder, was proving invincible, winning race after race, event after event. Speaking at the European Championships in Spain last March, Bontus said: “We will all be in a race for the other medals, no one can take the gold from Max. He’s at another level and anyone who says they can beat him is just fooling themselves.”

Bontus sounded like he meant it, but he kept working at this game, investigating every detail for a potential performance gain. Even his bright white stretchy overall that he wore in Marseille was an aero ski suit that he had been offered by the Austrian Ski Federation. “We tested it in the wind tunnel and there seemed to be a benefit so we went for it,” he said.

The Austrian also brought a lot of confidence to the Games, and appeared supremely relaxed even during the intensity of the four-rider final. “I was just staying calm doing the same thing as I did in the semi-final and managed to pull it off three times after that as well,” he said. “I’m insanely happy and I’m extremely stoked to be sharing the race course with these three legends and walking off with the gold medal. All these two last days I felt really strong. I knew my speed was there and just had to get off the start line well and keep my speed, and that’s what I did.”

After witnessing Bontus’s speed in the first race of the final day, the others scrambled back to the beach to change down from the big 23 square metre to the 15 square metre, the same smaller size that had proved to be Ellie Aldridge’s killer move when she won women’s kite gold the previous day.

During all the frenetic kite switching on the beach, Bontus just relaxed on his coach boat, grinning away, waiting out his time with his trusty 23 square metre in the sky. The Austrian was quite happy sticking with what he had. “I was pretty confident from our forecast that we weren’t going to get crazy winds and I think their kite change was more of a throw of the dice because I think they saw I was quite fast,” he said.

Italy’s Riccardo Pianosi certainly looked quicker at the start of the next race on his smaller 15 kite, but Bontus held his nerve. “Riccardo came back strong but I knew that if I’m within 10 metres of him at the windward mark I will definitely catch up on the downwind with the 23, and that’s what happened, and the rest is history.”

Bontus reflected on his journey through the sport. “My dad has been doing kiteboarding since the sport started and it’s been a very long way since then. I’ve been doing the freestyle stuff first and then hurt my knee and switched over to kitefoil racing. 

“It’s been two and a half years now that I’m doing a really full-on professional campaign with the support of the Austrian team. That help accelerated my learning curve quite a lot, and it’s insane to be standing here and calling myself Olympic Champion.”

written by Andy Rice