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Freedom is what drew Linda Moroz to the United States. It was also why windsurfing intrigued her. 

Using the elements of wind and water to move, the combination of power and finesse, the athleticism, those were all enjoyable to her, too. But being out on the water, going fast, “the sense of freedom,” she said, was the hook.

Vlad Moroz discovered windsurfing in his native Czechoslovakia in the late 1970s. His dad made him a primitive board – a wooden plank connected to a sail – modeled off one they saw in a magazine. When he moved to California a few years later, he saw people flying across Berkeley Marina. 

“I was like, ‘I got to do this,’” Vlad Moroz told USA TODAY Sports. 

Windsurfing brought Linda and Vlad, two refugees who fled Czechoslovakia separately, together in a foreign land. And nearly 40 years later, windsurfing – and that pursuit of freedom – is why their daughter, Daniela Moroz, represents the best chance for Team USA’s first gold medal in sailing since the 2008 Beijing Games. 

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“They've really lived out the American dream, I think,” Daniela Moroz said about her parents. “They want me to do the same in the sense of they want me to just keep working hard, but be enjoying what I'm doing. And then we kind of know success will come with that.” 

“Success” has come early and often for the six-time world-champion who is only 23 years old. Moroz will be part of kiteboarding’s debut as a sailing discipline at the Olympics. 

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“A lot of times, when people think of sailing, they think of grandpa sipping champagne on a yacht,” Moroz said.

What Moroz does could not be more different. 

“It's super-high performance,” she said. “It's fast, it's really technical and really hard, just physically, to do, and you need to be so in tune with the wind and the waves.” 

The burnout hits

Moroz saw the burnout coming. Winning everything for six straight years, most of that while still a teenager, will do that. She won six formula kite world championships in a row (2016-2022 there was no 2020 competition due to COVID-19). 

Moroz was 15 when she won her first world championship and became the youngest recipient and first female kiteboarder to receive the US Rolex Yachtswoman of the Year award, an honor she's received four times. 

While juggling high school, she kept winning, and Moroz attended the University of Hawaii to compete for the Rainbow Warriors’ sailing team. She stepped away from school – and the pre-class surf sessions and post-studying hikes – to pursue Paris two years ago but plans on returning after the Games.

“It is not real life there,” she said.

A dose of reality hit Moroz last year. She overtrained. The allure of racing evaporated. Even though she loves kiteboarding, she felt herself falling out of it. By finishing third at the Olympic Test Event in July 2023, she qualified for the 2024 Paris Olympics. All she wanted to do was go home and sleep. Moroz finished fifth at the world championships. It took all of her willpower to not break down before going on the water, she said. 

A lengthy winter break commenced. She’s spent time with a sports psychologist since and done traditional therapy. Journaling has also been helpful. 

“I was speaking to myself so horribly and, to think I was still trying to compete at my best while speaking to myself in that way and in the way I was feeling, I was like, ‘How was I even doing that?’” Moroz said. “And compared to how I feel now and how I talk to myself now and how I am so much more aware of these things.” 

And Moroz said she is in a much better place, mentally, entering the Olympics. The excitement of the Olympics has her buzzing and itching to get back on the water for her next training sessions. She's spent most of 2024 in training and living in Marseille, France, where the sailing events at these Summer Games take place.

Moroz is mature enough to know her life is not like many others her age. 

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“I'm just like, ‘Oh yeah, I'm just living in the south of France for the summer, having my croissants and baguettes every morning and going out sailing every day.’ That's so cool,” she said. “And I think it's easy to forget that.”

In many ways, Moroz is an average 23-year-old; she is a Swiftie and listens to “All Too Well (10 Minute Version)” before every race. She likes dirty chai lattes, plays tennis and swims. Both tennis and swimming have their sailing benefits; the quick reaction time and technicality of tennis, the strength and fitness that allows her to keep her kite in the air on days with little wind from swimming.

She'll fire up Mario Kart after a long day on the water. 

“You might think this is dumb,” Moroz said. “But there’s a lot of parallels with sailing, actually.” 

The timeless video game emphasizes the importance of a good start to evade the chaos, which comes with the territory of with uncharted and uncontrollable variables. Being hit with a shell is like an unfortunate shift of the wind that helps people behind pull ahead. 

“It’s fun because you can socialize, and not spend too much energy,” Moroz said. 

Which is a concern of hers when she’s not on the water. Moroz has been trying to keep weight on – Linda has dutifully taken on the role in the weeks before the Olympics to make sure her caloric intake is high enough – to the point she purchased an e-bike so she can still enjoy bike rides with her boyfriend while minimizing exertion. Otherwise, she would try too hard to go faster than him. 

“I am super competitive too, so whatever I'm going to be doing, I'm going to be going all out,” Moroz said.

The need for speed

If Moroz didn't kiteboard, she would be a downhill ski racer. 

“I just love going fast,” Moroz said, sounding like a Ricky Bobby impersonator. 

Moroz’s parents took her skiing as a child to Heavenly Mountain by Lake Tahoe, where she learned how to ski. When the Moroz family wasn’t in the mountains, they were by the water. 

Summer trips revolved around windsurfing and the beach. 

“She was definitely a water person,” Vlad Moroz said. “She always loved being in the water.” 

When she was 11, Daniela Moroz tried kiteboarding – a sport that had been growing in popularity in watersports circles – for the first time. Sandy Parker, who operates a kiteboarding school called “Kitopia” out of Sherman Island, California, was Moroz’s instructor and previously had been skeptical of teaching kids because kiteboarding can be dangerous. Quick thinking and decisiveness are must-have attributes. Moroz was a natural and soaked up Parker’s information. 

“She acted like she was 14 or something,” Parker told USA TODAY Sports. 

Parker started a racing clinic that met every other Thursday at the St. Francis Yacht Club. She encouraged Linda to bring Daniela, who would be competing against teenagers. The early wins were finishing the races. Then she started beating some kids. And more kids. And then everyone, even the guys. 

Sailing is a male-dominated sport, Moroz said, although at the Olympic level it is gender-equitable. Regardless, Parker made sure Moroz had the right mindset. 

“Don’t worry about beating the women,” she told her, “I want you to beat the men. Because that was really the only competition that we had at the time.”

Moroz had a few timing advantages that helped propel her to the top of kiteboarding. She started racing as foiling became popular and benefited from the level playing field as racers learned that type of board. Moroz also hails from the Bay Area, which is one of the most intense places to learn to kiteboard, Parker said. 

“If you can kite in the Bay Area, or even the delta where I teach, everything is so much easier,” Parker said. “She definitely got some intense training through the lessons at the delta.” 

Learning how to race beyond Crissy Field under the Golden Gate Bridge, Moroz became adept at dealing with other factors beyond the wake and the wind. Strong tides, tanker traffic and ferries make it all the more difficult. 

Somebody told Linda to take Daniela to Baja in Mexico for the Hydrofoil Pro Tour stop there. It lined up with Daniela’s spring break, and she finished second as a 14-year-old. The next year, the Hydrofoil circuit stopped in San Francisco during Moroz’s summer break, and Moroz also competed in Mauritius that August. There, she defeated Russian Elena Kalinina, who was then considered the top women’s kiteboarder. 

That result implored Moroz to tack on another stop to the schedule and compete at the world championships. And in September 2016, Moroz, then 15 years old, bested the rest of the field in China for her first title. Vlad Moroz accompanied her to China, but he felt uncomfortable the entire time being back in a Communist country. 

The American Dream

Leaving Czechoslovakia – which split into two states, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, after the fall of the Soviet Union – was not easy. There was no legal emigration. At the time, it was easier to go through former Yugoslavia, because its borders to Austria and Italy were not as well-guarded.

Both Linda and Vlad went through Yugoslavia. How they did it was quite different. 

“I decided to basically backcountry ski from Yugoslavia to Italy,” Vlad Moroz said. 

It was February, and the snow offered him the chance to strap into some skis once he had advanced close enough to the legal border crossing on a main highway. He went through the woods and to the West. A few hours later, he was in Italy. 

“I know some people got arrested trying to cross, but I was lucky enough that I avoided the guards,” Vlad Moroz said. 

Linda Moroz’s childhood in Czechoslovakia included activities such as ballet and rhythmic gymnastics. But she knew that if she truly wanted to be in control of her life as an adult, she had to leave. Her family took risks by taking vacations to West Germany. She realized that what she had been told about non-Soviet countries was a lie.

“Because there's always somebody listening,” Linda said of her childhood.

There was no internet, so Linda and a group of four friends decided the U.S. Embassy in Yugoslavia was their best bet. They could only take a backpack and pretend they were departing for a two-week trip. Bringing a winter jacket would have been suspicious because it was July. Her four-person traveling party hitchhiked from Zagreb to Belgrade, where they were told a refugee camp could take them. They waited there for six months. One of her friends had an uncle living in San Francisco, so that was where they were sent. 

Linda was about to turn 19 as she traversed the world. Vlad made his escape when he was 23 – the same age Daniela is now. Growing up, she didn’t grasp the significance of her parents’ journeys. 

“The more you kind of learn about it in school and in history classes, then the more you realize what a different time that was and just how crazy it all is,” Moroz said. “Or for my dad, I can't imagine cross country skiing across the Austrian mountains to freedom. It is just crazy.”

One day, near the marina used by the Cal Sailing Club in Berkeley, Linda heard two brothers speaking Czech – they introduced her to windsurfing. Vlad also settled in the Bay Area and his interest in the “flying” people also led him to this mini-Czech community.   

“For some reason, we ended up like four Czechs at this Berkeley Marina,” Linda said. 

This is how Linda and Vlad met. They were friends for years prior to dating. They wed in 1993 and Daniela arrived in 2001. 

When Moroz’s parents immigrated, Czechoslovakia was a different place than it is now, as is the case with the U.S., Vlad Moroz said. Daniela grew up knowing the Czech Republic as the place her grandparents lived; Linda’s two closest friends still live there, and they often returned as a family. At this point, Linda considers California home. She has been in the U.S. for 40 years and left before she was 20. To her, the “American Dream” is expressing one’s opinion freely without fear of persecution. 

“That, to me, means freedom,” she said. 

Vlad’s idea of the “American Dream” isn’t as rosy. He thought it was not needing to be rich to enjoy life. 

“I feel, unfortunately, that's not the case anymore,” he said. 

Vlad always told Daniela about the bubble she grew up in. America is not like other places. California is not like other places in America. 

“I think she understands it way better now after she's been traveling a lot of places,” Vlad Moroz said.

None of that diminished the gratitude he has for his life. He is a retired engineer who spends most of his days on the water now. And his daughter is representing the U.S. at the Olympics. 

“It's incredible. Because, in a way, (the U.S.) made me who I am,” Linda Moroz said. “And now she will experience it as her home country and, and you know, represent my dream in a way, my real country in a way. So it just means a lot.”