The latest sports trend: flying over water on a pump foil scooter

Benjamin Friant’s spent a lot of his life on wheels. After watching the European Scooter Championship in his hometown of Montreux around 20 years ago, he decided: «I want to be able to do tricks like that too.» From then on, every free minute was devoted to training. At the next European Championship, he made it to the top of the winner’s podium. Soon afterwards, he turned professional. Before long, he was the person that young athletes looked up to.

A few years ago, he set himself a challenge: he wanted to transfer the feel of being on a scooter to other action sports. Snowboarding, wakesurfing, wakeboarding, skimboarding – Benji was increasingly swapping wheels and tarmac for water or snow.

Inspired by the foiling trend

His willingness to experiment came at the exact time that wing foiling was finding its first fans in Switzerland. The new sport fascinated him immediately. «I wanted to build a foil scooter, but only after learning to wing foil so I’d know what it was all about,» he tells me when I meet him for a chat. But, like many aspiring foilers, he’d underestimated the learning curve.

«Everything’s developing so quickly that it’s difficult to get really good information about the right equipment,» he says. It’s also tricky to test expensive equipment. After all, the carbon wings are so fragile you can’t afford too many mistakes, especially ones that end up on pebbles.

Luckily, a sponsor from his scooter days stepped in and supported him with equipment. After several weeks, he finally succeeded: he floated over the water with the wing foil board, powered by the wind and with a wing in his hand. «Wow – unbelievable,» is how he describes the feeling.

Alongside his wing foil experiments, he was also working on a foil scooter. He shaped a board out of solid wood and mounted a scooter handlebar on it. A carbon foil on the underside was the final touch. Benji could hardly wait to test his invention.

This short pump foiling demo requires strong leg muscles and coordination.

From challenge to product

A crowd of onlookers gathered before he launched the board for his first attempt. The pressure was immense. And so was his nervousness. «And it was great,» he says. «The first prototype allowed me to glide over the water.» Without a motor and only powered by his legs. After months of trying to learn wing foiling, he managed to pump foil – which is considered more difficult – on his first attempt thanks to the handlebar and his design.

Fuelled by his initial success, he went back to the workshop and refined the prototype. Instead of wood, he developed a light board made of carbon with a foam core and adapted the shape to the specific requirements of pump foiling. His personal challenge became a new product.

And he was always drawn to the water. The fact that summer was long over and it was getting colder didn’t bother him. «I was completely alone on the lake and it was just incredible,» he says. «In winter, the water’s often as smooth as glass and the only noise is the quiet whistling of the foil and the wind. It’s a unique feeling.»

Besides the meditative aspect, pump foiling with the scooter gives him a good cardio workout and strengthens his legs. Pumping and keeping his balance work pretty much all of his muscles. Because despite the zen feeling, it’s his own body that’s the motor here.

Foil scooting on waves and ice

After the lakes, he was drawn to the sea, where he tried out the foil scooter on the waves. That worked too. In search of new adventures, he and a group of enthusiastic pump foilers also explored deep gorges such as the Areuse Gorge in the Jura, underground lakes including Lac Souterrain De Saint-Léonard in the Valais and rivers such as the Verzasca.

A collaboration with Red Bull enabled him to foil in an Icelandic gorge between the tectonic plates of the continents of Europe and America. It was on this trip that he also rode on the sea between icebergs with his foil scoot, as Benji calls his invention. «It was an incomparable feeling,» he says. The icebergs were constantly moving and curious seals swam around him. «It was crazy. Like being on another planet. Foiling took me to places I’d never have seen otherwise.»

Designed to make it easier for foiling beginners

After his successes, he wanted to share his enthusiasm for the sport with other people and make pump foiling more accessible. In fact, one of the biggest hurdles in the new sport is the dock start, where aspiring foilers jump from a jetty onto the board.

From my own experience, I can say that it takes many – sometimes frustrating – attempts to master it. So far, I haven’t succeeded. That’s why I’m the right person to test it. Benji agreed to give me some coaching on the foil scooter and record my progress on video.

Without the difficult jump from the jetty onto the board, I made rapid progress. Within the first hour of practice, I managed to make it a few metres further with each attempt. For me, it’s a real game changer.

Benji stresses that the foil scooter also makes foiling safer. The sport isn’t entirely without danger, as athletes can injure themselves if they fall onto the thin carbon wing with tapered wings. Since your hands remain on the handlebars when using the foil scooter, there’s a lower risk of landing on the sharp-edged foil. This also makes the foil scooter beginner-friendly, even if an impact vest, a long-sleeved wetsuit and a helmet are still recommended.

After Benji’s lone experiments on Swiss lakes and rivers and social media attracted a lot of attention, he decided to offer the foil scoot on a larger scale. A fundraising campaign is currently underway on Indigogo to get production underway.

Benji already has some product development experience. A few years ago, he worked with a manufacturer to launch a snow scooter. He now wants to use the knowledge he gained for the new trendy water sport.