Josh Gillitt

How did you get into kiteboarding?
My dad basically got me into it when I was eight years old. I have always loved water sports, and he said kitesurfing was a super cool sport, so obviously I wanted to try. I fell in love with it right away. When I was 11 or 12, we moved from Durban to Cape Town, and that’s obviously the best place in the world for Big Air. That’s where it all started for me.

What do you do before getting in the water?
I do a bit of stretching and I play some music to pump me up. Techno or house get me super amped for the session.

Tell us about your best kiting memory.
This is a hard one. At first, I would have said one of my trips to Mozambique, but honestly, I think my best memories are when I was learning to kite with my father. The stoke was so real! I went to a kitesurfing school for only six hours or so, and then my dad taught me everything from there. It was super cool to learn at such a young age.

Your worst wipeout?
It happened in November 2021. I was doing a kiteloop late backroll and my kite went completely to the side. I basically just fell out of the sky. I was probably 15m high or so, and that was probably my hardest crash yet. I actually burst my eardrum on that fall. I was super dizzy straight away, and I couldn’t even get my board even though it was right next to me. I couldn’t hear anything out of that ear, and my balance was completely off. It took about two weeks to heal so thankfully it wasn’t too long, but it all felt very weird.

Who would you like to say thank you to?
My dad for sure; both of my parents, actually. And obviously F-ONE and MANERA. I have been using F-ONE gear since the very beginning; I started learning on an old BANDIT DOS kite.

One sentence about the products that you are using.
Now I use the BANDIT kite, and it’s quite aggressive in strong winds. I love that it allows me to loop so aggressively, unlike many other kites out there. It also brings me quite a lot of height; it’s my favorite for sure.