Guillaume Colin never set out to invent a sport. He just wanted to fly in a straight line.
An accident changed the shape of his sporting life, but not its direction.
"Sport was a huge part of rebuilding my life after my accident," Colin reflects. "Getting back on the water meant reconnecting with the sensations I loved, and it gave me motivation and a way to keep moving forward."
That drive led him somewhere no one had really gone before: seated wingfoiling.
"At first, I didn't even know if seated wingfoiling would work," he says. "My dream was simply to fly on a foil in a straight line."
There was no blueprint to follow. Sitting lower on the board brought its own problems, chief among them a shorter wing clearance above the water. Colin found himself engineering custom seats, footstraps and waist belts just to hold his core steady enough to ride.
"Step by step, I learned to go upwind, gybe, tack, jump and surf waves and swell, and eventually, to race," says Colin. "I never imagined all of that at the beginning."
Word travelled fast through the watersports world. At the Défi Wing in Gruissan, France, an event known for its mass start line of hundreds of professionals and amateurs racing side by side, Colin turned up as the only seated rider on the water.
"What I love most is sharing the experience," he explains. "Events like Défi Wing bring together professionals and amateurs of all ages, abilities and experience levels. I was the only seated rider, but I was simply part of the same event, sharing the water with everyone else."
His influence has reached well past his own results. Colin has shared his equipment adaptations openly with riders and shapers around the globe, turning a solo experiment into the groundwork for an internationally recognised discipline, Para Inclusive WingFoil.
"It's amazing," Colin says of the sport's growth. "I love sharing what I've learned and helping the discipline develop and improve. We're still at the very beginning, so seeing international riders coming together from around the world for these first events is really exciting."
That growth reaches a landmark moment when Para Inclusive WingFoil features at the 2026 World Sailing Inclusion Championships in Portugal.
"I'm most excited about meeting the other riders, sharing ideas and learning from each other," he notes. "We can all help each other progress and grow the discipline. And of course, have fun racing together on the water."
Sailing's push to return to the Paralympic Games continues, and Colin keeps half an eye on that goal. But his real measure of success sits elsewhere.
"Of course, competing at the Paralympic Games would be an incredible experience," Colin says. "But what would make me even prouder would be knowing that an adaptation I helped pioneer contributed to the development of Para Wingfoil and, alongside the other disciplines, helped create new opportunities for sailors with disabilities at the highest international level."
