Current Record - Youngest rider to ride a sit-down hydrofoil (male)

World Record Snapshot

Record Title: Youngest male rider to ride a sit-down hydrofoil
Discipline: Sitdown Foiling
Class: Men / Overall
Measured Result: Age: 3 years old - (Lower is better)
Date: 1999-01-01
Has Stood For: 27 years, 141 days as of 2026-05-22
Location: Unknown
Record Holder: Ivan Honkala
Reference: Flight The Hydrofoiling Newsletter, Volume 3 Number 4: Ivan Honkala age 4

Youngest rider to ride a sit-down hydrofoil (male) — Rider: Ivan Honkala

Record Holder Spotlight

Ivan Honkala

Monster Council Approval

Pinto, along with the foiling community at large, has given this glorious achievement the official Foiling Freaks nod for Sitdown Foiling.

May it inspire better evidence, cleaner runs, bigger claims, and even louder hooting from the crowd.

Adopt Pinto and celebrate this victory with a little monster merch from the Pinto merch store.

The Monster-Sized Story

The Winter 1999 issue of Flight The Hydrofoiling Newsletter introduced 'Ivan Honkala, Age 4' as the sport's young foiling star and quoted him saying that he had been hydrofoiling since he was 3. That is the strongest directly stated age claim found for Ivan in the youngest-rider chain. A later Tony Klarich history piece also recalls Ivan riding a mini Sky Ski at Flight Worlds 2000 when he was four, which supports the broader timeline of his early participation without replacing the age-3 claim as the metric point.

Rules of the Beast

Age is measured in completed years at the time of a documented sit-down hydrofoil ride. The record requires a source describing actual sit-down hydrofoil riding, not merely water-ski training or passive towing on another device.

How This Got the Nod

Contemporaneous Flight newsletter supports Ivan's age-3 hydrofoiling claim. A later forum post says Ivan was the youngest rider for a time before Emma Honkala, but I did not enter Emma because I did not find a comparably clear age/date source.