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How hard is it to be a competing windsurfer these
days? Is it expensive or do you get (have you had)
enough support from sponsors in the past?
I’ve had some good support in the past when I was full-time,
but it wasn’t enough to sustain me on the world tour. Back
then I had incredible support from my parents, at some point I
needed the campaign to be sustainable financially, despite
reaching a high level there just wasn’t enough support, which is
why I stepped back from international competitions in 2006
and focused only on UK events which I then funded myself.
These days it’s very different at the top level to what it was like
in the 80s and 90s, but that’s not to say it couldn’t be like that
again. I also had ambitions to start a business which is pretty
hard to do when you’re on tour and not entirely focused.
I really do miss the international competitions though and
mixing it up with the best guys all over the world. I would like
to go back and do more at some point in the next few years.
I’ll need to train like I did before for that though so I can be
competitive again. More recently I have had fantastic support
from K66 with North/Fanatic/ION, and from 2018 I’m
sponsored by Goya boards. Windsurfing is certainly not a
cheap sport, but it’s definitely less expensive than some
others out there.
What’s your funniest story from comps (that we can tell
readers!)?
The best was while I was training in Maui with a couple of
friends. We ended up sailing over a whale which happened to
be just under the surface. I saw a slight colour change which
was odd to me, as we were quite far out so it couldn’t have
been reef. A split second later I looked back and that tail of a
humpback whale came out of the water and started slapping
away. Maybe it got spooked by us, I don’t know. Its tail nearly
hit one of the guys in the process. It was an amazing
experience and luckily it didn’t hurt anyone and we didn’t
hurt it with our fins, so it was all smiles.
uk
WIND
SURFING