Benyapa Jantawan

Achieving the pinnacle of any field of endeavour doesn’t come without sacrifice.  Some of the sacrifices Fon has chosen to make are regular, paid employment, partying late into the evening, drinking anything but a very modest consumption of alcohol and sleeping in her own bed often. In addition, she pays close attention to her diet and ensures she gets sufficient rest between training sessions.  However, the biggest sacrifices have been her ability to maintaining a close personal relationship with a partner and indeed having children.  All these things have been precluded by her tightly regimented training and competition schedule.  No-one could blame Fon for very occasionally letting her thoughts wander to these comforts, while alone in a hotel room in a foreign city. Next morning though, Fon is up early, ready to embrace whatever challenges officials, other competitors, weather and wind conditions might throw at her.

You may have seen her called Fawn in other media or even in her own socials, yet this is a nickname on a Thai nickname.  She actually prefers Fon, her mother’s chosen name for her, which means “rain”.  Fawn is an anglicised version of Fon, bestowed on her years ago by a British friend.  Fon’s eyes twinkled when she was informed this article would refer to her by her preferred name.

Here are some snippets of information about Fon that few will have heard before.  Her birthname was Kamorat, but she changed her name legally over 20 years ago now.  Fon is the youngest child of 3 and has a brother and a sister.  She was born prematurely, with a twin sister who unfortunately died soon after birth.  Fon’s mother had initially intended nicknaming her twins the Thai words for North and South, but was cruelly robbed of that opportunity. People who know of Fon’s lost twin sister tell her that is why she “has two energies in one person”.

She certainly needed both those energies when she crossed another item off her bucket list on 21st December 2020, becoming the first woman to kite-surf across the Gulf of Siam from Pattaya to Hua Hin. This energy-sapping feat took just over 11 hours and was impacted by one mishap after another, leaving the 3 finishers, of the original 5 who started the voyage, with little in the way of a support crew, in a wind of 25 to 30 knots.  Luckily Fon had had the foresight to ensure accurate navigation was possible on one of their watches.

And all of this daring from a woman who until the age of 24 had not played a sport or even learnt to swim.  Indeed, young Fon had a real fear of the water after a new-drowning incident in a waterfall as a child.  It became obvious to Fon soon after she started a short course of kite-surfing lessons at Surf Spot on Hua Hin beach that swimming was a necessary skill, despite the use of a floatation device for safety. Her immediate love of the sense of freedom kiteboarding gave her was profound. So, for a period of about 2 years, Fon learnt the fundamentals of kite-surfing at the same time she was mastering swimming. She was also solidifying another of her core beliefs as well, that there was no difference at all between what she could achieve in her chosen sport and what a man could do.  In this, Fon is a confirmed feminist.

During her kite-surfing career, there have already been rapid technical changes.  Fon initially learnt on a twin-tip board, then transitioned to using a Formula board with 3 fins.  She was one of the first in Hua Hin to use the newest equipment, the foil (hydrofoil) though not until after her current Chinese competitors had been using it for about 5 years.  Readers will be astonished to hear about the costs of high-level competition in Formula Kite, which sees participants navigating a pre-set course, in whatever weather, wave and wind conditions exist on the day, something akin to yacht races such as the Americas Cup. To suit all potential wind conditions, each competitor needs 4 different kites, at a cost of over 100,000THB each, and a foil which costs 200,00THB.  Fon estimates an equipment budget of a million baht is only just enough, and equipment needs renewing regularly.  Since she qualified for the World Beach Games in Doha in 2019, Fon has had some support from the Thai government, which helps with both her equipment and touring costs but prior to that, she was responsible for her own funding.  What an ask!  It was a pivotal point in Fon’s career when she was able to resign from her full-time job in the real estate business to concentrate on her sport, knowing she would still have food on the table and a roof over her head.

Since Paris is an inland city, the venue for the Formula Kite events at the Paris 2024 Olympics will actually be the city of Marseilles, on the Mediterranean Sea, in the south of France. To understand how Fon will become a Thai Olympian in July 2024, it is best to return to the beginning.

Fon was born in Nan Province, in upper northern Thailand.  Nan shares a border with Laos on its northern and eastern sides.  Fon’s father worked in the hotel industry, a job which saw the family moving within Thailand every few years for quite a while.  Her mother worked as housewife and mother, but took every opportunity she could to make extra money for the family, often by contracting laundry and linen services for the hotels which employed her husband. Young Fon was expected to help her mother with these tasks and recalls that as a child she had little free time.  She does remember that whenever she did have uncommitted time, her favourite thing to do was take herself off on little adventures, to explore the local area. Indeed, the spirit of adventure is strong in Fon, and she took advantage of the enforced competition hiatus afforded by the Covid pandemic to take a boat trip from Phuket with a group of friends.

Fon’s family were located in Petchaburi for her early school years and moved to Hua Hin and put down roots here when she was 11 years old. Fon’s mother had tired of the family’s iterant lifestyle, and she and the family stayed put in Hua Hin when her father next moved for his job. At school, Fon was a quiet, shy student who was sent to represent the school at Thai cultural and manners competitions.  She is looking forward to attending a major class reunion which is to be held next month.  Luckily, the date suits her schedule for the rest of the year, which sees her in China for more than a fortnight taking part in 2 further competitions, back in Hua Hin for only 4 days before jetting off to Italy for another 11 days.

While she enjoys the learning opportunities that travel and competition afford, it can be exhausting. One reprieve for Fon has been that a planned competition in Israel has been cancelled due to the war in Gaza. Fon admits she has ongoing concerns about the state of our world, including our need to war with our neighbours, and our misuse of natural resources.  She limits her use of plastics, because she sees where much plastic waste ends up, she tries to eat organic fruit and vegetables, grown without pesticides and experiences joy in growing plants on her veranda. You might even be able to catch her immersing herself in the natural world by putting on music and singing to her plants. Additionally, she worries about the pressure to study all the time that today’s children often face, robbed of the chance to just be kids.

Fon is proud to be representing Thailand, and Hua Hin, as it was here that she had her very first competition, at the Intercontinental Professional Kiteboard Riders Association event back in 2008. So “green” that she didn’t fully understand the rules of the competition, she kindly let a fellow competitor pass her, into 3rd place. This memory brought a wry smile to Fon’s face.

Although she is now a much fiercer competitor, Fon is still managing to pass on her skills and knowledge.  In the past, she has worked as an instructor in numerous places around Thailand including Phuket and Ko Samui as well as locally, but of course doesn’t have the time for that now.  Recently, she was involved in coaching a young, male Indian competitor prior to the Asian games for a month or two, encouraging him to meld his physical competence with his mental prowess to achieve his full potential in the sport. However, with her recent qualification, committing time to him is now impossible as well, but he is fortunate she has been able to introduce him to a Malaysian who can meet his coaching needs.

Before she qualified for the World Beach Games, Fon was not able to afford a sports psychologist, and she recalls a period of time when her mental strength was more fragile. She had just updated to using the foil, a borrowed piece of equipment due to its steep price and was not achieving the constant podium finishes she was used to, and she didn’t understand why. Fon felt her mind was telling her body what to do, yet it was sluggish and unresponsive and she recalls crying in public, something that was highly unusual for her.  A negative mindset ensued and it was only the intervention of her friends, Andrew Bunnog, a Thai kite-surfer and photographer, and Khun Oat Pachravalee, the owner of Surf Spot, Hua Hin, that helped get her back on track and out of her mental slump.  Khun Oat, who has at times been both a mentor and benefactor to Fon, as well as a friend, asked her bluntly if she wanted to give up, and this was enough for Fon to have a mental reset.  She never gives up, and never will.  Fon realised that although she had achieved champion status using her 3-fin board, using the foil required a completed new skill-set and she really had to be prepared to start from the beginning again. And since the foil was new equipment in Thailand, there were no instructors to teach her and she had to proceed by trial and error. So, the road to Olympic qualification has been long, hard and quite winding, as well as demanding of personal sacrifice.

Fon has already been able to compete in a test event in Marseilles, so understands the impact the local geography, including the many islands and the very unpredictable wind and wave conditions may have on her Olympic event.

As a person, Fon believes she still has a lot to learn.  She is on a journey to continually become a better version of herself, to care less about other people’s opinions of her and to always remain positive and non-judgemental of others. Now that she has achieved her goal of Olympic qualification, she has been able to entertain the idea that 2024 may not see the end of her competition and that she may desire a further Olympics.  Time will tell.

Fon has only a vague idea of what her future will hold once she finally steps away from competition and deflates her kites.  She is sure she will still need a challenge, and is interested in the world of business, but whether this should be in her beloved Hua Hin, her comfort zone, or whether she should push herself and undertake a new journey in Europe is still unclear to Fon. Whatever she chooses, Fon is sure to find her happiness, because of her ability to relate well to the people around her.  She has high admiration for a fellow competitor from Singapore, who has managed to continue in the sport while mothering 3 children. Fon is also a great admirer of Khun Oat because of her ability to achieve great balance in her life. Fon perceives the good in other people and makes sure she tells them she appreciates them.  She has built a tight-knit group of friends who offer each other consistent support, and has a small army of admirers on a variety of social media platforms.