Welcome to the F-ONE family, Pippa Van Iersel!
Growing up with the spot right outside her window in the Netherlands, Pippa has been hooked on kiteboarding from day one. Fearless, creative, and relentless, she rides to express herself, share the pure joy of the sport, but also to inspire the next generation and lift women’s kiteboarding to new heights.
We're so stoked for @pippavaniersel to join the team and can’t wait to see what’s next. ⚡️
Video direction @lidewijhartog
Additional footage @alexis.overlanding@arlinladue
Photography @meyerkeenan
3rd at the first ever Red Bull King Of The Air Women’s Division 🔥 BIG Day for female kiteboarding, it’s been an amazing event and I want to thank @redbullza for pulling this event off and give us the opportunity to showcase what we’ve got! I gave my absolute all. Unfortunately didn’t go the way I wanted it to go but I’m incredibly proud to be part of this historic moment. I will probably remember this for the rest of my life and I enjoyed the event so much, I just hoped to be able to show more of what I can do and stand on that top spot, but there will be next times for sure 🚀 Huge congrats to my broski @cescamaini for taking that win and @zarahoogenraad for 🥈 Was so sick to give the show with you girls! I’m going to reflect, change what needs to be changed and keep pushing. I freaking LOVE kiteboarding and the community ❤️🔥 Special congrats to my friend @luca_ceruti_ for claiming your first kota podium, so proud! Big shout out to my team @bruce__fritz@luciano.b2b@loicdeconinck , the caddies on the beach @mathys_rmgl@stefschipper and my family and sponsors for their endless support 🫶❤️
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📸 @redbullza@paddle.paddle
These are some of the signs that I personally experienced. But every single body and every situation is different 🫶
What made it difficult for me to recognize, is that a lot of these feelings slowly became normal over time. Fatigue? What does that even mean? I thought that came from training hard, traveling a lot, or constantly dealing with injuries, because that became tiring 😅 A low resting heart rate, usually a good sign for good cardiovascular fitness, so in that case “My body is fit in that area”. With RED-S it is “my body is trying to survive efficiently with limited energy”.
Eventually I was also always focused on fixing the next injury and getting back to training again, I never really stopped to think that there could be something deeper struggling underneath it all.
What I realized now, it’s honestly crazy how long the body can keep compensating and performing, while silently asking for help at the same time.
Right now I’m also really grateful that things are finally starting to make sense. It feels like I can finally stop just putting out fires all the time and actually start rebuilding without wondering, hmmm for how long can I keep my body in one piece this time. I’m looking forward to the process of slowly feeling better and even more to feel flipping awesome again, but step by step 😊
I’ll share more over the next weeks about what that process has looked like for me so far and will look like 🤍
Are you struggling with familiar things? Head over to @project_reds_ page, that really helped me. #REDs #redsrecovery
📸 @meyerkeenan@jasonbroderick_
❤️🩹 I got diagnosed with RED-S. Relative Energy Deficiency in Sport.
It has honestly been both relieving and confronting at the same time. Relieving, because things finally started making sense. Confronting, because I’m realizing how much my body has been compensation underneath for a very long time.
I think what makes this difficult is that a lot of these things become normalized in high level sport. Fatigue, missing your cycle, injuries, being extremely strict with food… it slowly becomes part of the routine.
Eventually, your body always keeps score. And for me, not a single podium, result or achievement is worth losing myself or health in the long run.
This is not the end of my story or career. If anything, it feels like the beginning of understanding my body for real for the first time. Even though this will be a long process and scary at times, I’m also excited to rebuild from a healthier and stronger foundation. I will take all the time I need and I’m incredibly grateful for the people I have around, @project_reds_ , @r_mcgregor for helping me in this process and all the athletes that reached out to share their experience with me already 🫶
If sharing this process helps even one other person recognize the signs earlier or feel less alone in what they’re experiencing, it would mean everything 🤍
Thanks everyone for the love, because I already felt that so much ❤️
#REDs #redsrecovery
Part 3.🤍
It’s still confronting to realize how much of this genuinely felt like a good thing to do at the time.
In a sport that was and still is so male dominated, I truly believed that if I looked and trained like the athletes I admired, I would eventually perform like them too. And because results were coming, it became even harder to recognize that my body was slowly starting to struggle underneath it all.
What started as discipline slowly turned into something much more controlling. But at the same time, it also came from passion. From wanting to become the best athlete possible and willing to do everything to reach the top.
That’s also why I think it’s important to talk about these things openly. Sometimes the line between dedication and self-destruction becomes blurry, especially in high level sports where pushing yourself is constantly rewarded and “looking fit” is often praised, while the warning signs underneath can easily get seen as “part of it.”
The moment I realized this was actually working against me instead of for me, I changed immediately. And from the outside, things seemed to improve again once I gained weight and looked ‘healthier.’ But inside, something felt worse than when I was at my lightest 47kg.
So that’s the part I’m dealing with now. Realizing how much this affected my body underneath the surface, and that even, years later I face big consequences of that period.
I’ll speak about my recent diagnosis in the next video.
If anyone is struggling with something similar, my DMs are always open, don’t hesitate to connect ❤️
Much love,
Pips
Part 2 | Where it started. The recent diagnosis I received isn’t actually about my stomach.
But to understand the full picture, I felt it was important to share this part too.
I recovered well from what happened back then, but ever since, any stomach issues I experienced were often linked back to that history.
The good news is that recent scans ruled out anything seriously concerning the stomach.
Right now, I’m just waiting for the final test results to get more clarity on the full picture :)
With 🤍 pip
Part I. For a while now I’ve been dealing with back to back injuries and I couldn’t really figure out why.
So I started looking deeper
and something came up.
Something I don’t fully understand myself yet
So I’m not ready to explain it.
But I will ❤️
And for the people close to me who’ve been there these past weeks, it means a lot 🫶
🤕❤️🩹 Hips don’t lie
In February I tweaked my hip in a bit of a silly crash. Light wind, one foot stayed in the strap while the other came out, which pulled my leg in a weird way. I felt something’s off but didn’t think it was anything serious, after a week of rest I started to doubt that.
I got it checked, and the scan showed a small labrum tear in the hip and a grade 1–2 strain in the rectus femoris. Not the news I expected or wanted to hear at the start of a season.
The good news: the whole surrounding area looks strong and acute surgery isn’t needed. It’s possible the labrum tear was already there from the past and that I just irritated, pinched it or made it slightly bigger (which happens quite often with athletes due to wear and tear), but you can’t say that with 100% certainty.
Together with my team and the specialists we’ve decided to treat it conservatively. I’m going to put 100% into everything I can do to give this the best chance. Patience, smart rehab, and doing everything right to come back stronger. I’m starting to hate this sentence “come back stronger”, after all the injuries I’ve had, it’s true that you come back stronger, but feel free to give me another creative sentence ;)
I’ll share this journey with you to give a transparent insight into what I’m doing throughout the process to heal as well as possible. Hopefully it can help some of you that are going through a rehab as well :)
For now: rehab/train mode, staying positive, and focusing on the long game.
See you back on the water soon 🤍
Biggest thanks, as always, to my team, family, and sponsors for keeping me smiling through this process and just being there, you know who you are 🫶
🚀 Stoked to join TeamFoolHardy! Can’t wait for the future projects we’re gonna do together. It’s a team full of creatives and diverse athletes ⚡️Lesh goooow
