Five-time world champion is preparing his bachelor thesis on motorized surfboard

Those who want a bachelor's degree must write and defend the final thesis. You will not get an exception even if you boast with five world champion titles. Lukáš Záhorský, the world champion in motosurfing, is also well aware of it. He decided to use his sports insights in his studies and combine the topic of his bachelor's degree with a motorized surfboard, which he would like to adapt to more environmentally friendly fuels. He is writing his thesis under the auspices of MSR Engines, the company for whose factory team he has been racing for the past three seasons.

Right at the beginning of the interview, Lukáš admits that he did not make this year's racing season too easy for himself. "In the first race I collided with my teammate and took a big gap, at the next races in Mexico I suffered technical issues. In the middle of the season it looked like I did not stand a chance," said the 2016, 2018, 2019 and 2021 World Champion. In the end, however, he managed to make a grandstand finish and surfed to his fifth title of the World Champion in motosurfing.

At the end of the racing season, not only did Lukáš's racing bad luck break, but also his bachelor's studies rolled into his last year. And with it came the question of what to do with the bachelor thesis. "I decided, as always, to combine school, sport and my work experience in a company that manufactures motorized surfboards," says Záhorský. As the topic of his bachelor thesis, he chose the development of green fuels for small combustion engines.

Exactly such engines power the Jetsurf boards, but in accordance with technological developments, the company also offers electric boards and in the field of combustion engines it is interested in exploring the possibility of switching to non-fossil fuels. It is just here that Lukáš sees space for his bachelor's thesis, for which he has arranged Professor Josef Štětina of the Institute of Automotive and Transport Engineering as his guarantor. "I want to focus on synthetic fuels, i.e. non-fossil fuels produced chemically," explains Záhorský.

The idea of more "green" motorized surfboards is said to appeal to the promoter of the World Championship. Today, competitors use exactly prescribed fuel and in order to guarantee fair play, the organizer of the event provides the fuel for them. "Actually, I am quite looking forward to my bachelor's thesis, I'm very interested in it. In my opinion, it is important to choose a topic that one is passionate about, "says Záhorský and believes that he will not only finish his work and studies in time, but also combine it with the next racing season.

"In January, I started testing green fuels in the test room, so I believe I will be able to manage everything. Of course, the overall transition of the motosurfing racing to synthetic fuels would require additional work by developers and several hours of work, my bachelor thesis is just the first step. I just hope the synthetic fuels will work the way we expect them to," says Záhorský.

Already in the previous interview, Lukáš emphasized that he wants to end his racing career at the top, and that is still true. Whether the peak will come this year or later, he himself does not know. Whenever the end of his career catches up with him, he would like to combine his non-racing future with motorized surfboards. And although he still hesitates to choose his master's degree, it will certainly be a field that can be connected with motosurfing.

An older interview with Lukáš Záhorský can be found here.

Lukáš Záhorský (*2001) Lukáš started racing for Jetsurf in 2014. A year later, he finished second at the World Motosurfing Championships, winning the World Championship title in 2016, 2018, 2019, 2021 and 2022. He is studying the third year of Fundamentals of Mechanical Engineering at the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering of Brno University of Technology.

Themes

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