Bryn Muller will take the next three semesters to train for the Summer 2024 Olympic Games (Courtesy of Bryn Muller).

For sophomore Bryn Muller, windsurfing started as “just a fun high school sport.” But it has become much more than that these days as Muller campaigns for the 2024 Olympic Games. Muller competes in the iQFOiL class as one of ten sailing disciplines that will debut at the upcoming Summer Olympic Games in Paris, France.

Muller began windsurfing after attending a summer camp at her local community sailing center in the 8th grade, and she competed on race teams throughout high school. Now, she is a member of the Olympic Development Program (ODP), which provides “world-class coaching support to promising American youth sailors in high-performance classes.” 

In foiling, athletes use a hydrofoil that goes through the water; iQFoiL refers to the type of windsurfing gear that will be used in the upcoming Olympic cycle. According to Muller, it functions “kind of like airplane wings” and brings the board out of the water, reducing drag and allowing athletes to move faster. 

When Muller started attending ODP camps in 2020, iQFOiL did not yet exist as a sailing class. “It was a little bit casual because we didn’t even know where the Olympic classes were going next, but [the ODP coaches] knew they wanted to start growing it,” Muller said. 

Muller’s windsurfing career has taken her around the world. Last November, she represented Team USA in the inaugural Junior Pan American Games in Colombia, where she placed third in the race course. One male and one female athlete were chosen from the United States to compete. “It was about my closest taste [of] getting into that Olympic-level windsurfing,” she said.

Muller often trains in her home state of Florida, as well as California, Oregon, and Hawaii. Missouri, however, does not have the conditions and water access that Muller needs to practice windsurfing, so she maintains her fitness during the school year as a member of the WashU Crew Team. “It’s a joke on the crew team. Everyone gets a water-bottle nickname. Mine is, ‘It’s a water sport’ — that I had to come up here and figure out what water sport I could do,” Muller said. 

Last fall, she went home more regularly because she was training for a big regatta at the end of November and the beginning of December. “I was really trying to [maintain] my windsurfing [abilities] to be ready for that regatta,” Muller explained. Recently, she has not been going home to train as often because windsurfing is “such a weather-dependent sport.”

“Even if I go home for the weekend, if there’s no wind, then I can’t train,” Muller said. Needing longer blocks of time to fully commit to her Olympic campaign, Muller will be taking the next three semesters off from WashU.

Muller always planned to take her junior year off because Olympic trials will be held in the winter, at the end of 2023 and the beginning of 2024. But since there are two important qualifying regattas that Muller wants to train for, she decided to take a leave of absence for the spring semester of her sophomore year as well. 

“I need to be full-time windsurfing to have a real shot at trials. I can’t do that while I’m in school — [it’s] not just about being in St. Louis, [but] just having more time to do everything,” Muller said. “I just had to be confident in the decision of, ‘Even if I don’t end up going to the Olympics, the journey that [I] go on and the things [I] learn about [myself will be] a cool experience.”

Training full-time will give Muller the chance to focus solely on windsurfing. “Even if you’re a super serious athlete, you’ve always had school and athletics. I’m really excited to see what it’s like to be like a professional athlete, where your only goal is how to get faster on the water,” she said.

Outside of the water, Muller will spend time fundraising for her Olympic campaign and continuing to run a newsletter for the country on iQFOiL, meant to help “try and build the program as a country.”

Muller plans to return to WashU to finish her degree, graduating in May of 2026. Though she hasn’t declared a major, she is interested in math and physics.