Inside the kite camp where CHUV met IKO
Some camps teach a sport. This one had bigger plans.
Every year, roughly 400,000 children and teens worldwide are diagnosed with cancer.
Dr. Francesco Ceppi from CHUV, the Lausanne University Hospital, had a great idea: take ten of them to Sardinia, Italy and let the wind do the rest.
Dr. Ceppi is a pediatric oncologist specializing in leukemia, lymphoma, and cellular therapy, the kind of work that saves lives, but rarely comes with room to think about what happens after. Today, roughly 4 out of 5 kids and teens diagnosed with cancer beat it, but beating cancer and feeling like yourself again are two very different battles.
Around 80% of survivors still carry moderate to severe long-term effects from treatment. Dr. Ceppi wanted to help close that second gap. Not medically. Just humanly.
He called IKO Assistant Trainer Emiliano Lucchesi at ProKite Sardegna. Emiliano didn't need convincing.
"It wasn't just about organizing a kiteboarding course," he says. "It was about building a chance for these kids to feel something new. Something intense. Something positive."
"He didn't just show up in Sardinia," Dr. Ceppi adds. "He came to Lausanne first, to meet the kids before they even packed a bag. They knew his face before they knew kiteboarding."
The camp landed at Punta Trettu, on the southwest coast of Sardinia, and that wasn't random. Punta Trettu is a lagoon, not open sea. Shallow water stretches for hundreds of meters, so beginners can always just stand up and walk if something goes wrong. Steady thermal winds blow through the bay for most of the season, which means consistent conditions instead of a lucky-or-not forecast.
Sardinia itself has become one of Europe's go-to kiteboarding destinations, and Italy is part of the IKO network's 350+ IKO Centers spread across more than 60 countries. But for this camp, the flat water mattered more than the scenery. A forgiving spot means less time fighting the conditions and more time actually learning.
Kiteboarding asks one thing: can you trust the wind, the gear, and yourself, all at once?
For most beginners, that's hard enough. For these teens, fresh out of years of hospitals and treatments, "letting go" sounded almost like a joke.
Emiliano wasn't chasing perfect technique. He had one goal: help every kid do something that, on day one, felt impossible.
"I wanted them to feel welcome. Safe. Free to try, without fear of getting it wrong."
On day one, everyone was careful. New country, new faces, new sport, nobody was in a rush to prove anything. But day by day, the fear decreased. The confidence grew. Friendships started forming between kids who, a few days earlier, had never met.
"Their eyes changed," Emiliano says. "They got brighter."
By the end of the week, every participant stood up and rode their board across the water for the first time. No exceptions. Five days to go from complete beginners to new kiters, that's the real milestone.
Emiliano remembers the first rides best.
"Seeing the first kids glide off on their own, with that disbelieving smile on their face, I got emotional. I'm not afraid to admit I cried."
…watching someone rediscover freedom will do that to you too.
That moment repeated itself all week. Ten times. Never less real.
Emiliano wasn't just there for the lessons. He joined the group from the first evening in Lausanne to the final goodbye in Sardinia, shared dinners, inside jokes, and the small moments that end up mattering most.
One night, the teens invited every instructor of ProKite Sardegna to their final dinner. Nobody expected it. It was a simple gesture, but it said a lot.
"Being with them outside the water lets me understand them better," Emiliano says. "It helped me support them, not just as an instructor, but as someone they could count on."
By day five, the shy new arrivals were gone. What was left: a group that laughed easily, teased each other about who kiteboards better, and clearly trusted one another. The dinners, the small chaos, the unplanned moments, all of it mattered just as much as the time spent on the water.
Ask Emiliano what surprised him most, and it's not the riding. It's how quickly the group changed. Kids who arrived quiet and watchful left the week louder, more relaxed, more willing to laugh at themselves.
Some of that came from the sport itself. Kiteboarding isn't something you do alone, even when you're the only one on the water. You wait for the wind together. You help each other rig up. You cheer when someone lands their first ride, and you laugh together when someone falls. In kiteboarding, falling just means you're trying. That shared rhythm builds real closeness.
But most of it came from each other. From ten kids who understood exactly what the others had been through, without needing to explain it.
"These kids faced challenges far bigger than anything they met on the water," Emiliano says. "But they took on kiteboarding with enthusiasm, humility, and courage. As an instructor, it taught me to listen even more. As a person, it left me with real gratitude. I think I got more out of that week than I gave."
You can't control the wind. But you can learn to work with it. That's the whole idea behind kiteboarding, and maybe the whole idea behind this camp too.
"Every small step forward is a real, immediate win," Emiliano says. "That's how you rediscover one simple feeling: I am capable."
This camp was one story inside a much bigger one. IKO now counts more than 600,000 kiters worldwide, and initiatives like this one are exactly the kind of impact the community hopes to multiply. But for these ten teens, the only number that mattered was five: the days it took to believe again.
Emiliano puts it best:
"I thought I was there to teach kiteboarding. In the end, they taught me something too."
Ask Emiliano for his favorite photo: the group shot from the last day on the beach.
"There's the wind, the sea, everything we went through together," he says. "And most of all, the bond between people who were complete strangers a week earlier."
