My Mum
I lost my mum when I was 12 and I think it was a big influence on my life path. When it happened I thought, “what is the thing I most like to do”, and that was windsurfing. My dad gave me the opportunity to go to Maui so I didn’t waste my time there. It wasn’t something that I had to do; it was something I wanted to do.
Windsurfing love
Windsurfing is like a relationship. You fall in love with it. You have good and bad moments. Sometimes in professional windsurfing the bad moments can be really bad, and you never get up. I have seen so many really talented windsurfers snap and they leave. I always tried to hold on because I believed in my relationship with windsurfing. After so long, like a relationship, it’s sometimes hard to keep the same love for one thing.
Influences
I grew up watching Jason Polakow and Robby Naish and all the guys. Actually Nik Baker was a really big influence on my windsurfing, especially competition. For sure he wasn’t Jason Polakow in the way of style. He was radical, but not like Polakow, but everyone teaches you something; Polakow taught me to find my own style, but Nik taught me to compete well, to land all your moves. I think he was a huge influence for all our generation. You have to land your moves and be smart in heats.
Future Generation
I think we have all been young and dumb. You can say and do many silly things when you are younger and nobody really told us not to do it. So now when we are in competition and there is no wind, I try to say to the kids to stay calm, don’t say and do stupid things. It’s difficult when you are young because you think you are much better than you are, but in the end if you work hard for it, you can make it. My advice to the younger generation is concentrate on your windsurfing and don’t be driven so much by Facebook or Instagram. It’s great to share the good moments on the social networks, but make sure you windsurf for yourself and not just for likes.