Indiana’s Freestyle Champion Robert Von Roll Debuts His Signature Pump Foiling Gear

Fresh off his victory at the Swiss Pump Foiling Freestyle Championship, TotalSUP caught up with Robert to discuss his latest achievements, the launch of his first Signature Board with Indiana, and how his passion for the discipline has shaped both his riding and board design. Dive in as Robert shares insights into his journey and what’s next for him in the world of foiling.

Hi Robert, welcome back to TotalSUP! What have you been up to?

Hello Anna, thanks for having me again! I’ve been on the water a lot, from flat water freestyle pumping, foil surfing the wind waves on our Swiss lakes, foiling the waves of bypassing boats to  my newest achievement of flying nonstop for over one hour.

Photo by Anne-Camille Vaucher

What’s new? And first of all, congrats! – We’d love to chat about your first Signature Board! How did that come about?

Thank you! Yes, I got my own Signature Board – the  Indiana 94 Pump Foil Carbon “Von Roll” – and it was a great success. I’m so happy to have had this possibility to design a board that was once a mere dream. I got the first prototype a few months ago and now it’s also up for sale on the Indiana website. For my first board it came out really well and it’s now my weapon of choice for almost every dockstart foil discipline.

Photo by Anne-Camille Vaucher

Could you tell us more about the process and how collaboration with Indiana looked like in practice? You’ve worked with shaper Andi Widmann on this board…

I will start from the beginning: after talking with different foilers and shapers I realized that I may have the option to realize my dream board. So I got myself a software on my laptop for designing boards and started working on the shape. After a while of crafting I had a very weird looking board at which many of my friends had a good laugh.

So I modified the shape and showed it to the Head of Indiana Maurus Strobel. I explained the idea, the functions and the advantages behind the shape. And to my surprise he liked the idea. So I teamed up with Andi Widmann, who helped me refine the shape. Working with Andi was awesome, he’s a great shaper and is ready to try out something new. Because the shape of my board is very unique and with a spacious deck for a foil board, having Andi’s support really made me confident and excited about the final results.

Photo by Anne-Camille Vaucher

What was missing in the boards you’ve used that you decided to design your own?

For example, I love how easy, small and lightweight boards are to pump but miss the space for placing my feet in an optimal way and the volume for paddling. Or I love how I can place my feet optimal on wider boards and the volume for paddling but notice how the weight affects my pumping. So, I wanted to combine these features in one board.

Photo by Anne-Camille Vaucher

The board has a unique shape – what’s the purpose behind it?

When I want to ride a big foil or carve on a smaller foil I really like to have a wide deck. This is  because I can then place my back foot on the rail if the foil is going to tilt to the opposite side. Or when I want to do a carve where of course I tilt the whole foil to the maximum, I’m still able to tilt it back to start pumping again. But I just didn’t need that extra space in the front of the board, because then I would have kept this width for the whole board which would make it a lot heavier. So, I made it a lot thinner and smaller in the front.

This way in comparison with the Indiana 95 pump board, it is roughly the same in terms of length, weight and thickness but is way wider in the back, has more than half a litre more volume and has a significantly lower swing weight which also allows long distance pumps. In the beginning I was a bit worried about water touchdowns, that’s when your board hits the water while pumping. The part where the board gets wider could make the board slow down significantly, so I designed the rail specially to smoothen the touchdown and at the same time make it easier to grab and hold. I could talk for a lot longer about concaves, convex concaves, width and length but I will leave it like this.

Photo by Anne-Camille Vaucher

It’s been developed for freestyle pump foiling – Could you describe this type of pump foiling for us?

Freestyle is something that will eventually develop from any sports. If there’s stand-up paddleboarding there will be freestyle SUP, if there’s snowboarding there will be freestyle snowboarding. It’s just people trying out what’s possible and how, if it works it becomes a trick. But especially in pump foiling it’s very hard to know if something will work or not. From my experience everything will work if you just try long enough.

In pump foiling it’s mostly about trying out what you can do while still maintaining balance, so if you want to do a foot drag on the water, you will have to replace the place where your foot would be with a hand. Right now, it’s booming with new tricks and many pumpers have their own signature tricks. Me and my little brother are always pushing new tricks.

Photo by Anne-Camille Vaucher

We’ve learned how to pump on our knees, lay sideways on the board, pump backwards or to sit on the board with our feet touching the water. My brother even does combinations of up to ten tricks after another, he lays down, sits on his bottom, goes on his knees, lays down again and again.

But my favourite thing and also one of the first tricks I ever did is showing the foil tip during a tight carve. It’s a trick you will have never mastered fully. By now I can sometimes breach half of my front wing while still pumping away, thanks to my signature board, but there’s still more to learn.

There were the first ever Swiss Freestyle Championship held this September, along with the regular solo racing and team racing Championship, that took place on Lake Biel organized by Swiss Foiling. Of course me and my family went there. We got on the podium in all the disciplines including team racing and solo racing, but the freestyle contest was my favourite, that’s where my little brother Matheo got second place and I got the Swiss Freestyle Champion Title with first place!

For the Championships, Maurus Strobel was on site, with the newest gear from Indiana, such as the new Lightning 85 Mast I got to use, that is one of of the lightest masts on the market and the Barracuda Front wing range, from which the Barracuda M got me third in the racing championship. And of course the smallest of the Condor Front Wing range, the Condor S that helped me get the first place in freestyle! The new Front wing ranges are already up to pre-order at the Indiana Webshop!

Photo by Anne-Camille Vaucher

Is it suitable for riders of all skill levels?

Yes, definitely! It may look a bit weird at first glance but it’s a board for every level. For beginners there may be some cheaper and more compact solutions but for the rest it’s perfect. For foilers, that tend to big foils it’s a very good choice because big foils are normally very hard to turns and control but with the wider back it’s way easier to guide the foil the way you want to go and not the way your foil wants to go. I also like it for smaller and faster foils, because I can do even tighter turns.

I ride foils from nearly 2300 cm2 that I use for long distance pumps to foils, that are 850 cm2 that I use for surf foiling. I’m leaning to say, that my board is at the moment one of the best boards for longer foil runs, like Jérôme Baudoux and Nicolas Iten do it, from Indiana. Nicolas and Jerome both used the Hydroskate, a very small board, but with this board it’s very hard to control the big foils they use like the record breaking Condor XL. It seems like it would be a lot lighter than my board but because they put screw-inserts for footstraps on the Hydroskate, they’re the exact same weight of 2.2 kg. But soon Indiana will drop some magical boards, which will be in a total different weight class than the previous boards so stay tuned!

Now that you’ve been involved in a designing process, could this be the path you’d be potentially exploring? What are your foil plans?

Let’s see! It really takes time to design a board but with a brand like Indiana that wants to have a wide range of quiver and that I’m very friendly and familiar with it’s always fun. And there is already an idea of making a second version of my signature board. I’m also doing a school project about efficiency in pump foiling and what role gear, technique and training plays in it. So, stay tuned for more!

Thank you Robert for your time – Keep flyin’ high and good luck with all your amazing projects!

Photo by Anne-Camille Vaucher

Revisit our interview with Robert and his hands on tips to start pump foiling and follow him on Instagram

To find out more about Indiana Paddle & Surf, visit:  Indiana Paddle & Surf

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*Images courtesy of Robert von Roll