INBOUND – AFS PURE 600

We love a pro rider collab – that knowledge that real world rigour has been baked into the product and there’s a rider who’s happy to put their name to it. And that’s exactly what’s happened with the new AFS PURE 600, with the input of Axel Gérard…

So team, what were you setting out to build with the PURE 600? What were those original intentions?

As always with AFS, our main goal is to make real performance accessible to everyone. With the PURE 600, we wanted to create a foil that delivers the same level of performance as the pros, but remains accessible to ambitious riders. The idea was clear: bring World Cup performance into everyone’s hands. And now it is!

Working with Axel Gérard, vice world champion on the GWA tour, we set out to build a foil that accelerates your progression and transforms every session into pure adrenaline. Globally the PURE range was born to push limits: go faster, fly higher, and feel every sensation with absolute precision.

Yeah the PURE 600 is a collab between yourselves and Axel. How did the partnership between you both take shape? What did each of you bring to the table?

Our philosophy at AFS Advanced is simple: performance is born where technical innovation meets real-world experience. Axel has been riding PURE foils for years now. When we started discussing the next step, it was obvious, he knew exactly what he wanted to feel on the water. Over nearly a year, Axel and our R&D team worked hand in hand: we designed, he tested, we refined.

He brought his competition mindset, the precision and demands of a world tour athlete. We brought the engineering expertise to translate his sensations into measurable design improvements. The result is a genuine co-creation: the PURE 600 is not inspired by Axel’s setup, it is his exact World Cup setup.

So with that in mind, is this foil primarily for elite riders or is it still accessible us mere mortals?!

It’s certainly the real deal – this is a pro standard setup. But that doesn’t mean it’s only for elite riders. In fact, it was designed to help ambitious foilers step up.

If you’re already riding a PURE 700 and want something more reactive and radical under your feet, the 600 is your next step. It’s ideal for lighter or younger riders, or heavier riders in strong winds who want a foil that stays sharp, fast, and precise. So whether you’re chasing podiums or personal progression, the PURE 600 delivers that “pro feel” and gives you the confidence to push harder.

This foil is focused on precision and control at speed. What were the biggest technical considerations to make that possible?

From the start, we aimed for a foil that would deliver speed with stability – a hard balance to strike. To achieve that, we developed an ultra-thin profile to minimize drag, combined with a refined aspect ratio for glide and precision.

The entire structure uses UHM (Ultra High Modulus) carbon, which ensures immediate energy transfer and maximum stiffness. Every input translates directly under your feet.

We also paid attention to modularity: depending on the stabilizer setup, riders can tune the foil for explosive freestyle, freerace control, or big-wave stability.

Can you describe how the back-and-forth testing process worked? Were there any surprises along the way?

It was a true dialogue between our lab and the water. Axel pushed every prototype in extreme conditions: from high-speed runs to aerial freestyle, while our engineers adjusted every parameter based on his feedback: profile thickness, flex patterns, fuselage balance.

There were plenty of surprises as with every product development. Some prototypes that looked perfect on paper didn’t perform as expected in freestyle. Others, designed for control, turned out incredibly fast. Every iteration taught us something new.

A lot of prototypes later, we reached the PURE 600 Pro Model, the one Axel now rides on the world tour.

Axel mentioned that this foil keeps his “speed alive after the moves.” What factors in the design make that possible?

That’s one of the most interesting outcomes of our work. Thanks to the optimized lift distribution and increased rigidity, the foil maintains speed and flow after landings or rotations. There’s no dead moment, the foil instantly re-accelerates. For Axel, this is key in competition: he can chain moves without losing rhythm. That continuous “alive” feeling is exactly what we wanted to capture for every rider.

Final one – do you think you’ll do more rider/brand collabs in the future?

Absolutely. It’s a real source of innovation for us to be able to develop products directly with riders. Working directly with riders like Axel allows us to test ideas faster and further than any lab could on its own. Each rider brings a unique perspective that helps us innovate in real conditions. So yes, we expect more collaborations with different kind of rider and more of that direct link between what happens on the world stage and what you ride tomorrow.