Built, ridden, shipped: the wing and its eight years

First prototypes

2010 – 2012 — the date is contested, see below

Flown on a foil

2015, Hood River

Shipped

2019

OXZA's claim about who invented it

None

Why did the first prototypes go in a closet?

Because they worked and were still useless.

The wing made power and it was controllable, and then the rider had to put it on something. What existed was boards drawn for other jobs, and the honest result was a sail you hold with your arms instead of one on a mast — more work, less reward, no reason for anyone to want it. A good object with nothing to do.

So it was put away. That is the part of the story worth keeping: the idea was not abandoned because it was wrong, it was parked because half of the system did not exist yet.

What made 2015 different?

The other half turned up. By then a large foil was in development in the same shop, and pairing the two took an afternoon.

With a foil underneath, everything that made the wing awkward becomes the point. It does not need to make much power, because the foil is already carrying the rider. It does not need to be held rigidly, because there is no mast fighting it. Once the board is flying it goes quiet, and the rider is cutting upwind and working swell with no mast, no lines and no kite.

What is still unresolved about this story?

The first date, and it is the most-quoted one.

This site's founder record says 2011. In interview Tony has said 2010, and separately "2010, 2011" for a production attempt that did not survive. A magazine account puts it around 2012. Those can all be true of different moments in one sequence — a first prototype, a failed production run, a breakthrough in 2015, a relaunch in 2019 — but that reconciliation has to come from him, not from us picking the number that reads best.

So the range is printed instead of a year. It is the least satisfying sentence in this series and the one most likely to still be correct in five years.

On the larger question, the position does not move: OXZA does not claim Tony Logosz invented wing foiling. Several people arrived at the idea in the same window: Naish prototyped in autumn 2018, and Ken Winner at Duotone and Rob Whittall at Ozone have their own claims. What the public record shows is that Tony's prototypes are the earliest documented — built 2011, ridden on a foil 2015, shipped 2019. We publish the dates and leave the crown alone.

Hood Memory Lane records what was built in Hood River before OXZA existed. The dated version is on Tony's timeline, where this row is marked as contested rather than smoothed over; the first foil is the other half of this story and it was drawn fifteen years earlier. The current work is the REVSTAR system — and wing foiling, unlike most of this series, is a discipline OXZA builds for today.