Inside the Mind of Kiteboarding Legend Kevin Langeree

In this interview:  

Kevin, who grew up in St. Martin, got introduced to watersports like sailing and kiteboarding at a young age. He discovered kiteboarding after moving back to the Netherlands and was thrilled by the combination of surfing and flying kites. He became part of the competitive kiteboarding scene during the PKRA era, alongside notable names like Aaron and Sam. The competitive side of the sport has since declined in terms of prize money and support from organizations like the GKA. Kevin believes there is a need to create value and build a solid foundation for competitive kiteboarding. He transitioned from freestyle to big air and has won the King of the Air competition three times. Kevin is amazed by the rapid progression of young riders and is excited about the future of the sport. Alongside Damien Girardin, he co-founded Reedin, a kiteboarding brand that gained recognition quickly in the industry. Despite initial nervousness, Reedin's success can be attributed to their innovative ideas and the team they assembled.

Pat: Kevin, I saw that you lived on St. Martin. Is that where you got your intro to kiteboarding? Did your parents introduce you to it?

Kevin: I used to live in the Caribbean on St. Martin, and I did get introduced to watersports there. Sailing was my first sport, and I was hooked from Day One. I love to be in the ocean and I love the wind and everything about sailing, so I was trying to do it every single day. I also started flying kites on the beach there when I was 7 years old, but back then, kiteboarding didn't really exist, or at least not in the mainstream. I'd never heard about it until I moved back to The Netherlands when I was 11 years old and saw kiting for the first time. I started surfing when I was 9 and had been flying kites since I was 7, and when I saw the combination between the two, I thought it was like a dream come true. Two of my favorite sports combined? Wow, I need to get into this!

Pat: What about the Holland kite scene? It seems like it's a fairly large, popular sport over there, especially relative to the North American scene over here. If there are fifteen guys at the beach here, it's a busy day.

Kevin: It's like fifteen hundred here. It's crazy. I can't believe how the sport just exploded. I remember when I started, if there was another kiter I would cycle all the way down to the beach to go and say hi to that person, and now on a windy day, you look left, you look right, and the only thing you see is just kites everywhere. And it's not only here in Holland; it's all around the world. It keeps growing and getting bigger, and it keeps becoming more professional, so it's very exciting to see where the sport has come to now and where it's going to go.

Pat: It's kind of crazy to see how large it's grown. Back when I started, it was a handful of guys here in Michigan. Now it's not nearly the size of the Holland scene, but every day there's wind, there's someone on the beach flying a kite. No matter what beach you go to, you'll see a kiter out somewhere.

When you joined the PKRA during the glory days, back when freestyle was cool, how was that going through those competition years with Aaron and Sam and all those big names that are core to the industry, or as everyone's referring to you guys now, the "old guard"?

Kevin: I feel like an old guy, but I'm still pretty young, I think. Well, not compared to the youngsters nowadays that win at the King of the Air, but those PKRA days were amazing. When I started to kite, and when I started my competitive career, there were two generations before me. The first generation was names like Robbie Naish, Max Bow, and Flash Austin. Then the next generation came with Mark Shinn and Martin Vari and those guys, and then it was the young guys like Ruben, Aaron, Alvaro Nieva and myself, and we kind of kicked the "older guys" off their throne and we took over.

Those days were amazing. We were very young; we'd just got out of school and we were flying all around the world doing what we love, competing and making a living out of kiting, and that was quite amazing. I was able to quit school fairly early--I wasn't very much of a school guy--and luckily I found my passion in kiting and figured out a way how I could make a living. We had between eight and ten tour stops a year, so if you did well you could actually make some okay money and put some savings aside.

That's unfortunately not the case anymore; it seems like it's really gone backwards. Nowadays, if you look at the prize money, it's almost embarrassing. These guys are putting their lives on the line and, if you win, you make like 3000 Euros. It cost you almost 2000 Euros to get there, you pay a bit of tax, and then if you're lucky, you make 500 Euros. So it's quite embarrassing and unfortunate to see where the competitive side of the sport has gone. The general market of kiting is really growing and there are a lot more kite companies making money and a lot more shops making money, so the industry is definitely growing. I think guys like the GKA should definitely step it up.

Pat: Do you think that's due to a perceived lack of value to the competition side of it? I know the original PKRA disbanded and turned into the GKA. Or do you think it's a lack of value perceived from the brands themselves?

Kevin: I think, first of all, you need to create value, and I think that's something that has not been happening nowadays with the GKA running it. I hate to say it, but I'm going to be honest- it's like they are trying to build a roof, and the foundation is never built. They get a bit of money from somewhere and then they start building a roof, and then it gets a bit wonky, and then, boom, it collapses again after a couple years. And we've been seeing this cycle over and over again, but I think one of the most important things to make this valuable is to build a foundation like you build a house. You first build a solid foundation, then you start building walls, and I think the thing the competitive side of kiting needs to focus on is to make sure you create a value. You create an audience; once you have an audience you create value, and once you have value you can get money out of it. And you need to run it as a proper business, and I think that's something that has not been happening since the PKRA. The PKRA was, of course, also not perfect. I don't think it'll ever be perfect, but at least there were quite a lot of tour stops. The riders were able to make money for quite a long time, and now it's just not sustainable. I hate to say it, but to me it's quite a joke. It's embarrassing for the sport, almost.

Pat: Yeah. It's unfortunate it's gone that route, and it'd be nice to see it come back to what it used to be, even in some capacity. Last year they had three tour stops total for the whole thing.

Kevin: I hate complaining and not doing anything about it. When I have some time, I would love to dive into it. I think there's huge opportunities for kiting, and especially competition kiting. The King of the Air is quite amazing.

Pat: Your transition from that freestyle scene into King of the Air and big air... was that pretty much a natural flow for you? Was that the next step, or as it happened did you just move your focus with it?

Kevin: I became world champion in 2009, and then I had a massive knee injury in 2010, so I basically went from hero to zero right there. That was quite rough, being one of the best kiters in the world to not being able to grab a glass of water out of the kitchen, and that was not only physically tough, but also mentally. I had to get surgery, did the whole rehab and everything, and it also got me thinking that maybe I needed a little bit of a new challenge than just doing freestyle. Luckily, just a couple years later in 2013, King of the Air started to come back in South Africa. I competed in the first year and I was like, "Wow, this is going to be something. This is exciting." I got a lot of excitement back into kiting because I was kind of burned out with freestyle. I was doing it almost too much. After my injury I still did a bit of freestyle, but that was a cool transition into something new, something fresh, something exciting, and that was big air. That was very exciting, and it's still very exciting doing big air.

Pat: So you've won King of the Air three times now. What goes into your King of the Air prep the morning of? Do you treat it as any other day on the water where you're going to the beach and going out riding and having fun, or are you more locked in and focused? Is it different from your normal day?

Kevin: The day itself I try to treat as normal, as I usually do. I do my morning routine, get my breakfast, get a bit of coffee, meet with some friends, and that's how I perform the best. If I feel comfortable with the right people around me, that's when I know I perform the best. I try not to put as much pressure on myself even though it's very hard not to because it's the biggest kite competition in the world, and there are like 10-15,000 people cheering for you on the beach, which is quite nerve-wracking. But I just try to be very prepared. I make sure I'm physically very prepared, I'm strong, I'm mentally very prepared, and I make sure my gear is in top shape, that every bar I roll out is perfectly tuned. That way I eliminate all the things that can possibly go wrong, and then it's just game on and I try to just enjoy it and go as big as I can. I spend a lot of time in South Africa, which also helps because you get quite comfortable there. When that green flag goes up, it's not that comfortable, though; it's pretty flipping scary.

Pat: I'm sure it is. I know it's still early on in the year; do you see yourself doing competitions this year? Do you see yourself going back to those this year, or are you kind of stepping back and focusing on the business side of things and family stuff?

Kevin: Well, I'm a very competitive kind of guy, so I don't give up very quickly, but sometimes I have to be a little bit honest with myself. Last year in the King of the Air, the last one I rode, it was just amazing to see how many of those youngsters are coming and just going so stupidly big. To be honest, I'm at a point now in my career, especially during the last King of the Air, where I was okay with it. I remember that moment when I was against Jamie Overbeek--I think it was the quarterfinal--and I was riding in and he was riding out, and he took off and he did this massive kiteloop board-off over me, and I looked at it and the only thing I could do was just have a big smile on my face, and I was clapping. I was like, "You know what? It's okay. It's time for those youngsters to take over and take the sport to that next level. But I'm not going to say that I will never, ever compete again. Maybe I'll wake up in a few days and decide I'm gonna just grind and put all the work into it and try my best. It's very possible; I know I can do it and I know if I put my head around it, I can do it. It's just quite a big commitment.

Pat: For sure. You've got a lot going on, of all people. Going off of the new, young kids coming around, the spike in progression in the last two years: insane. Thoughts on it?

Kevin: It is just insane. It seems like every time I open my Instagram, there's a new kid doing a double and I'm like, "How in the flipping world??" Some tricks that they do, I've been practicing for 20 years, and then these kids come by. They probably have been looking at all the videos from the old guys and they're like, "Oh, I guess we can do this." So I love that whole progression. I get so excited just watching Hugh and Andrea and Casati and all the other young kids just going mental. I love it; it gets me fired up.

Pat: Yeah, it is crazy to see how fast it caught up and then pushed past the line. Three, four years ago, if you were doing a Boogie Loop or a kiteloop, that was a big trick. Now you go to your local beach, and there are 20 people out doing kiteloops when before you would never see anybody doing kiteloops here.

Kevin: It's unbelievable. It took me a broken ankle and probably 15 years of practicing a kiteloop board-off, and nowadays you see the local guy doing it at your beach and you're like, "Oh, okay. That went kind of quick.

Pat: It is funny to see how everyone saw that it was possible and then just kept running with it.

Moving into starting your own brand, Reedin, how did that come about? Was that your brainchild, was it Damien Girardin's idea, or a combination of both you guys together? How did that all come about?

Kevin: I think it was both. We had the idea for quite some years, so every time we saw each other, we would brainstorm about the idea. "Oh, could you imagine having our own brand? Then we could do this and this and this, and we'd do it differently and make it look like this and this."

It's very different from brainstorming an idea to actually doing it. That step is quite big. But we both almost simultaneously came to a point in our careers where we were wondering what we were going to do next. You know Damien; his natural instinct is to keep growing, keep working hard, and keep innovating new ways of design, and that keeps him fired up. I have that exact same thing. I don't want to sit still; I want to create something, I want to do something and figure out what's that next step. I felt like it was such a logical step to do this adventure together with Damien. I felt like we both had ideas and we would keep brainstorming together, and together we would come to this point where we both would not have come if we would have done it by ourselves, so it was a very natural decision to do this together.

We ran some numbers in an Excel sheet eventually. We thought it was a really good idea, but you have to make sure that the numbers are right as well. So we ran those numbers in a massive Excel sheet, and we saw that if we put this money in the beginning, then this money comes out in the end, and it's working. We basically put our savings in it and we started, and that was literally a dive in the deep.

Pat: I think you guys hit a home run right off the bat. How were some of the challenges of breaking into it? I feel like kiting is a hard market to break into. There are very established brands, and I feel like Reedin made its way into the forefront of the industry a lot quicker than you would expect a smaller one-off kite brand to. There are plenty of small, one-kite brands like Harlem and other brands, but you guys kind of exploded right away.

Kevin: Well, I think we were very nervous at the beginning because, although we thought we had a good idea, who says people are wanting to buy our kites? But I think the beauty of Reedin is that while we are a new brand, the team we have built has so much knowledge in-house. I think that way we were able to make quite an explosive growth. Sometimes I look at the numbers or I look at where our kites are shipped to all around the world, and I have to pinch myself all the time. I'm like, "Wow, is this real? Are these people riding our products?" It's like a dream come true and it's very exciting and very fun.

It started with Damien and myself, and I think we both really know what it takes to work hard because becoming world champion is not easy, but being one of the best kite designers in the world is also not an easy place to get to. I think both Damien's work and my work combined as the base of the company, and connecting people with that same mindset to our company really helped us have quite an exponential growth in the just over three years that we've existed now.

Pat: That's awesome. The one-kite focus of the company: was that your idea, was that a Damien idea; how did that come to be? Was there talk about adding more kites eventually, or are you doing this one kite and you're going to make it the best kite you possibly can and that's it?

Kevin: Of course we looked at the market because we've been in the industry for many, many years, and we saw quite a lot of weird things in the market. We wondered why you really needed eight or nine kites in your whole range. We looked back at it and realized most of the older kite brands are old windsurf brands, and with a slalom sail, for example, you cannot wave ride because the shape is all weird, so you have to make different shapes.

In kiting, that's very different. In our opinion, you do not need nine kites in your range. First of all, it makes it very complex to design. Second of all, it makes it very complex to explain to anyone which kite fits the best to that certain rider. As a customer, if you ride your twintip and you like to ride waves a little bit as well, and then in the light wind you like to ride your foil, does it mean you need to buy three different 9 meter kites? It's a bit strange.

So with that in mind, we started designing. If your kite turns fast, it's great for jumping, but if your kite turns fast, it's nice for wave riding too. If your kite turns fast, it's nice for foiling, and if your kite is very stable, it's nice for big air because you can you know exactly where you're going to go. For wave riding, it's nice too. So that was the philosophy we were looking at. We wanted to make this kite that is going to do almost everything.

Damien went to the design table and he started designing and designing, and then the first sample I tried I was like, "Wow, I think we're very much on the right track here." We did a couple more samples and then, boom! Version 1 was there. That was why we made the Supermodel and why we still believe that it just works. If a kite is really good, it works for all sorts of disciplines.

I'm not saying we would never, ever make another kite. If we're constantly developing, trying out new things, seeing if we can build a kite that can complement the existing Supermodel and we're constantly developing it, maybe one day we'll make a kite that can complement it. But up until now, that Supermodel is just so flipping good and so easy to use. I'm very confident to give it to any sort of rider. I don't explain anything; I just have them try it and see what they think, and 95 percent of the kiters love that thing. I think we hit the nail on the head with the design.

Pat: Yeah, it's a great kite and I think you guys are spot on with the whole philosophy there, as far as just making one kite. It seems like 85 percent of any given brand's sales is one kite. It's more about an all-around shape that people gravitate towards. People can't go out and buy one kite for every specific discipline. Like you said, you can't have three 9 meter kites; it's not reasonable to expect any regular person to do that.

Kevin: Sometimes they come up with a "performance freestyle" or a "performance freeride" kite. What is a "performance freeride" kite? It's like they have to come up with all these names to say this is the kite that fits through this. I don't know; it's just interesting.

Pat: Yeah, it is. Working with Damien, you've been with him since he was a designer at Naish. How has that friendship developed over the years, and how has that changed now that you've been business partners with him? I've been lucky enough to meet him a few times now, and he is a perfectionist of a human being and an absolute brainiac.

Kevin: Yeah, I think he's one of the hardest-working people, next to my sister. If Damien has an idea, he's going to put his head down and work as long as he can to achieve his goal. To be able to work with him and use his knowledge to build Reedin is just mind-blowing. It's a lot of fun, it's exciting, and it's crazy how much work output that guy can do. I sometimes can't keep up. He's on that computer grinding, coming up with samples, coming up with new ideas, coming up with new materials, and sometimes he tells me, "Okay, I think we should do this and this and this," and I look at him like, "Are you out of your mind, Damien? Why would we do this?" I've learned now to just listen to it, I sleep over it at night, and I think about it, and 99 percent of the time I'm like, "Holy cow, man. He's like five or six or seven steps ahead already." And that is amazing and I think it's just so cool being able to do that and make products that we love to ride ourselves and keep progressing. There's just a lot of excitement.

Pat: The new HTF just launched. I was guessing that the whole design principle of it was to get a bit more flex in those wingtips so it turns a little quicker and snaps back. It's an interesting take on the materials, saying that everyone's going one direction with things, but you guys went a bit in a different direction, but still kind of the same idea, I guess I'd say.

Kevin: Sure. The whole trend nowadays is to use different materials, so we're definitely on that track as well. We're trying new materials and figuring out different ways of building kites, making them lighter, making them more efficient, making them turn better and faster while making sure the wind range becomes bigger. I think now, with the Supermodel HTF, it's amazing how much of a difference you can make using two different kinds of materials, the FlexLite and Dacron; it's just mind-blowing. If you look at the kite, you might think that the white stuff is not going to do much, but it's amazing how different it is. The FlexLite is slightly lighter and it twists a little bit better, but you keep the overall stiffness because of the Dacron. The beauty is, if on the wingtip that turn goes quicker or you have to put less bar input to get the twisting starting, your kite is turning a lot faster. That's something we have tried, and basically from the first sample we were like, "Wow, it's amazing how much difference this can make." Then we started adding certain things like the taper transitions, for example, to make sure the transition of the FlexLite into the Dacron goes really smoothly. I was always keeping in mind that the durability of the materials needs to be the top of the top, otherwise we don't want to put it on the market. The Supermodel HTF is working great and we're getting a lot of really good feedback from the gear, and I'm very proud of what we've done.

Pat: Yeah, it feels great. It feels like what you'd expect from a Supermodel. It just feels like it initiates turns a little bit quicker, is a little bit snappier... a little bit crisper-feeling, I guess I'd say. I've got a few sessions on a 9 meter Nick sent me, and I've been loving the thing.

Where do you see the sport of kiteboarding going in general in the next three to five years, or where would you like to see it go?

Kevin: As I mentioned when we started this interview, I would definitely love to start to see a more professional kite competition tour. Hopefully that's going to happen sooner than later. I think those youngsters are just going to keep pushing.

From our side on development, I think we as brands are on a constant hunt to find different materials and use even better designs. I think with all that, combined with some amazing, talented riders, the jumps are going to be bigger and bigger. I remember a couple years ago we were hitting the 20 meter mark, and everyone thought that was amazing. Now we're at 35 or something. It's insane, and if this keeps going, within four or five years we're going to be jumping 45 meters high and 200-300 meters far. That's where we're going to go, and it is very possible if we keep developing products that can complement that sort of riding. It's going to be amazing.

Pat: That's awesome, and I think that's where things are going to go myself. On the winging side of things, what are your thoughts on winging? Where do you see that going? Do you see that continuing to grow and build steam in that category? It already seems like it's almost caught up to kiting in a sense, as far as sales for us. It's almost apples to apples at this point, as far as that goes, but do you see that continuing to develop, or do you see that sort of trending down a little bit?

Kevin: No, I think that will keep growing, for sure. I think when the sport just started, a lot of brands and a lot of people thought it was going to take over kiting within a year. I think it still needs a little bit of time. Some areas that I travel to, like your spot, it's 50/50. Here in Holland in my hometown, it's like 10 wings versus 90 kites. In Cape Town, it's like two or three percent wing, and the rest is kite. But if you go to France, it's like 50/50. So it's very dependent on the location, and I think it has a huge potential.

It's very easy and accessible for a lot of people to do. You could give your mom a wing and a board and have her just go out on the water without any explanation and she will be okay. I wouldn't really do that with kiting. I think, for a lot of people, that kiting is a little bit too extreme. I think winging is going to be a great match for that, and I think for us at Reedin that there's a huge growth potential. Again, we have a lot of knowledge in-house, and Damien has been designing wings pretty much since the beginning of winging, so he has a crazy amount of knowledge and he's put that into our product. I think our products are definitely up there with the best, and it's exciting to see a brand new water sport just exploding again. Being there from Day One, and now making products to be part of that wing culture and that growth is exciting. I get a lot of energy out of that stuff.

Pat: I definitely agree with you and I think you're spot on. I think it is really spot dependent of where you're going to see it be popular. I don't see Cape Town ever becoming a very popular wing spot, but I do think it does open up a ton of different spots that you'd never kite. There are spots I've winged where I never would have put a kite up in the air, so it's nice for that, accessibility-wise.

Let's wrap it up with one more question. This one was kind of a popular one; we put a couple polls up on Instagram and Facebook to see if we'd get some questions from other people, and a lot of people are asking what's your favorite kite spot around the world, excluding Cape Town? I think everyone knew that would be your answer.

Kevin: Yeah. Well, my hometown. I enjoy kiting in my hometown Noordwijk with my friends. I live by the beach, so I walk to the beach, which is very nice. Spots like Mauritius is, for example, one of my favorite spots. It's beautiful with good waves and good wind. I was not allowed to say Cape Town now, but Cape Town is very nice though.

Pat: Yeah, we all know the real answer.

Kevin: I shouldn't have promoted it too much because now it's gonna be so busy.

Pat: I think it already is. Well Kevin, thanks so much for stopping by today. I really appreciate the call this morning.

Kevin: Cool, thanks for having me.

MACkite Subscription Links:

YouTube  |   Instagram  |   Spotify Oddcasts

Contact MACkite Below:

800.622.4655  |   Kiteboarder@MACkite.com  |   LIVE Chat Messenger