Interview: Holly Kennedy, kite-surfer

The championships includes five events in the UK, and Kennedy would have been the favourite to win the overall title, had she not missed one of them in order to compete for the world title. Despite this handicap, however, she's still hoping to finish second.

When we meet, there's a distinct lack of wind on the west coast, and her blue eyes keep flitting skywards as she tries to predict the weather for this weekend. Not enough wind is a disaster, but similarly too much wind can be problematic. She's optimistic about performing in front of her home crowd, but is feeling the pressure.

"I suppose I don't want Scotland to disappoint," she says, her Scottish accent tinged with an international twang that can't quite be pinned thanks to two years spent travelling the globe. "It may be a little chilly, but it really is a fantastic country for kite-surfing, and I want everyone else to know that too. Being close to nature in a beautiful environment is one of the joys of kite-surfing And the Scottish beaches are some of the most beautiful in the world."

Kite-surfing is the fastest-growing watersport in the world, and has overtaken windsurfing in popularity. Kite-surfers use a small board similar to a wakeboard, but with bindings which hold their feet in place. They move using a small kite on a 25-30 metre line. In addition to jumps and tricks, kite-surfers will race and freestyle. Its appeal lies, in part, in its convenience. A kite will fit in a backpack and a board is easy to carry around, and it's not expensive once you've got the basic kit.

"The wind is free and you can get a beginner's kit for around 700," explains Kennedy. "As long as you're willing to stick at it and devote a bit of time to it, it's not too difficult to pick up. I started in 2008 and began competing in amateur competitions the same year. By 2009 I went professional."

Maggie Cleeve came to Fraserburgh from Cyprus to set up Synergy Kitesports five years ago, and says she has noticed considerable growth in the sport. "Everyone thought we were mad coming to Fraserburgh from sunny Cyprus, but the conditions here are second to none," she says. "The wind is good and there's a nice variety to the conditions. Plus the beaches are huge and tend to be very quiet, which is great for kite-surfing as you need a lot of space. When we started out, we might have seen one or two people out with kites, but now you'll easily see 25, which is really encouraging. We also found initially that our customers were coming up from the Central Belt, but it's grown so much in popularity that now most of them are coming from Aberdeenshire."

So what's the appeal of kite-surfing over other watersports? "There's more of a sense of freedom than with windsurfing," explains Cleeve. People love that you can jump and do tricks, and the kit packs down so small that you can move around easily. And, with a bit of time and dedication, you can get a lot out of it quite quickly. We began teaching some people in April, and by the summer they were learning to do jumps."

Kennedy was taught to kite-surf when she was 16 by her father and brother, both watersports enthusiasts. She was always a sporty child – competing in gymnastics and winning athletics prizes at school – but was looking to get into watersports. Her parents – a restaurateur father and a property developer mother – moved to Troon specifically to raise their family by the sea, and Kennedy is out on the water most days, wind permitting.

Her kite-surfing career didn't get off to the best start. "I began learning just as we were coming into winter, and I was really, really put off by the cold," she says with a laugh. "Plus, I was lifted up unexpectedly and I came down into the water with my legs straight. I tore all the ligaments in my ankle and it put me out for six months. I suppose that would put some people off, but I'd say I tend to persevere a lot and I like to stick with something."

After recovering from her injury, she took a gap year between school and university to travel to South Africa and Portugal to improve her kite-surfing, and is now taking a year off from studying geography and business at Glasgow University to focus on competing.

Her sport remains male-dominated, for now, in part due to misconceptions about the physical requirements. "A lot of girls think that you need to be very strong to kite-surf," she says. "That's a myth. It's about your mind and body working together. Before you go into the water, you have to understand the wind. It's a very technical sport, and knowing the way the wind works is crucial. The key to it is to be able to work on two things at once. You should know what your feet are doing with the board and what your hands are doing with the kite. All the while your brain is taking into account what the wind is doing. It sounds complicated but once you master it you find that it clears your mind completely. It's unbelievably exhilarating."

When she started learning on the wide beaches at Troon three years ago, she was one of just one or two people kite-surfing Today, she says, she'll easily see 30 people "on a quiet day." Despite its growing popularity, she remains one of just a few women in the sport, but insists that the men are all on side, even when she's jumping higher and riding faster than them.

"I've found that the guys are really supportive, and I've never come across any problems when I'm competing," she says. "Teaching is a bit different, though. I've found that when I'm teaching men, they think they have to be better than me, which is a bit funny to watch. They tend to think, 'Well if she can do it, then I should be able to do it too. And better.'"

Kennedy has a couple of sponsors at the moment, but is looking for more. It's not cheap to travel to compete, nor does the sport pay particularly well. After the event in Ayr this weekend, she will compete in the final of the British championships in Blackpool in October. Then it's off to Brazil for a few months of intensive training. After that, who knows? While she insists that she will return to university to complete her degree, she knows she won't be stuck doing the nine-to-five.

"I just can't see myself in an office job," she says. "I'm focusing on competing at the moment, but I think I'd like to teach kite-surfing in the future. Having a good teacher is hugely important because there's a lot to mastering it and you must do it through a proper school. When the wind suddenly gets really strong and you've got a big kite pulling you up into the air, you've got to know how to deal with it."

So how exactly do you deal with it? At this point she launches into a technical description of how to bring yourself safely back to earth when a kite is dragging you eight metres above the choppy water. She senses my confusion so adds with a chuckle: "I suppose you can find a little comfort in the fact that you'll always come down eventually."

• Visit www.britishkitesurfingassociation.co.uk for more details

Factfile

• There are around 150-200,000 kitesurfers worldwide today, a big increase from 1998 when less than 100 people were participating in the sport.

• There are around 700 kitesurfers in the UK.

• You can kitesurf in wind as low as five knots, but most people won't go out in winds of less than 12 knots. It is possible to kitesurf in winds of 40-50 knots, but anything over 30 is considered dangerous.

• Many kitesurfers will have three kites to deal with different wind speeds.

• As a general rule, longer lines are used for less wind and shorter ones for more wind. The standard length is around 25 metres.

• Kitesurfers take up a lot more space than windsurfers. The standard safe distance between windsurfers is just five to six metres while kitesurfers can need up to 50 metres, so they tend to look for big beaches

• Tangled lines are the cause of most accidents for beginners. Such mishaps are known as "kitemares".

• Good spots for kitesurfing in Scotland are on the east coast, such as West Sands in St Andrew's, the home of Kite Sports Scotland, the first school in Scotland to be certified by the International Kitesurfing Organisation.

• The first water-relaunchable kites were designed in the 1980s, which was when the sport first took off.

• For information on kitesurfing in Scotland try scotlandkiteboarding.com or www.synergy kitesports.com