Meet Miami Olympian Dominique Stater

There are people who live their lives on the move. And then there’s Dominique Stater .

As the daughter of a United States diplomat, Stater has seen moves among six countries and moves among sports—from gymnastics to equestrian events to snow skiing to windsurfing.

But on July 28, when she zips over Mediterranean waters, her moves will make history as the first U. S. women’s iQFOiL Olympian.

“I love the adrenaline and the speed,” says Stater, speaking from Cadiz, Spain, where she’s training for the Paris games. “To be able to race with the top girls from each country is super cool.”

It’s the Olympic debut for both 23-year-old Stater and this new evolution of windsurfing. Thanks to its winglike hydrofoil, the iQFOiL board lifts off the water, making it appear as if the rider is flying. The foil’s average speed—around 25 miles per hour—is four times faster than average speeds reached on traditional boards.

As a 12-year-old attending school in Buenos Aires (she’s also lived in Nicaragua, Peru, Chile, and Colombia), Stater watched kite- and windsurfers gliding across the expansive Rio de la Plata. By the time she turned 14, she was competing internationally in windsurfing, and traveling to Miami to train. In 2018, she represented the U.S. at the Youth Olympics in Buenos Aires.

Stater took a break from competition to attend the University of Miami. But like many students, she “needed a job.” In 2021, she began teaching sailing and windsurfing to kids at the Biscayne Bay Yacht Club.

It was there that she tried foiling for the first time. “I was hooked,” she says of riding the more compact and agile board. “It rekindled my love of windsurfing.”

Around the same time, the International Olympic Committee announced that the foil would replace traditional boards at the Paris games, so Stater put college on hold to train. The gambit paid off. Her silver medal in the 2023 Pan American Games qualified the United States for a spot in Olympic women’s windsurfing. And in January, Stater won the U.S. Olympic team trials, held at the Miami Yacht Club where she’d trained as a young competitor.

The experience itself was grueling, Stater recalls: 27 races in eight days, “competing in every condition,” she says. “But to be able to do that in a place I knew, with old friends cheering me on the water, was so great.”

Since clinching her spot at the Paris games, Stater has spent time traveling between Cadiz (where her coach, two-time U.S. Olympian Pedro Pascual, lives), and Marseille, France (where the 2024 Olympic sailing events will be contested). She admits that she loves the international lifestyle her sport allows, but says life on the move will always include stops in her hometown of Miami.

“You have so many amazing opportunities in Miami,” she says. “You can be anywhere and be near a beach.” After a day spent training in the chilly North Atlantic, she wistfully adds, “And you don’t even need to wear a wetsuit!”

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