British kitesurfer Lewis Crathern set a jump height world record of 42.6 m at Bracklesham Bay in West Sussex. The mark was logged during a storm-powered session and later verified by the WOO sports platform.
A magic gust found in Storm Austen
The jump came on Friday 23 October 2026, at about 2pm, as Storm Austen drove winds of more than 65 mph onto the Sussex coast. The same winds brought down trees, damaged property and disrupted local roads and the railway. The storm had swept the coast and collapsed part of Brighton's West Pier into the sea.
Crathern, 41, launched on a 7-metre Harlem Peak kite and said he found "that magic gust" during the day. A small sensor mounted on his board recorded the height, and WOO's review ran for more than 24 hours before confirming it. He had gone out without cameras or a plan, so the record came as an unexpected result of a day on the water.
He said he felt comfortable in the stormy ocean, having grown up on the Worthing seafront. "The bad weather in our sport becomes the good weather," he told the BBC. "You become the kite."
A home-water record, decades in the making
The 42.6 m mark beat the previous record of 42.3 m, set by Jamie Overbeek of the Netherlands in April 2026, a margin of just 0.3 m. The Argus set the scale by noting the height is about 90 per cent of the Arc de Triomphe, and called it the highest jump ever recorded.
Crathern, from Worthing, is a former four-time British champion and a vice world champion. He learned the sport at Lancing Beach and Goring Green, has kitesurfed for 22 years, and in the late 2010s jumped over the Brighton and Worthing piers.
"I always believed I would find the magic gust around here somewhere," he said, describing the jump as one that needs experience and the right mindset rather than "an 18 year old's body." Crathern now wants to use the record as a platform for advocacy, working with the Global Wind Energy Council to turn people towards wind power and renewables.
