EARLY DAYS
I was born in Vienna and grew up there and went to school in the city. I started windsurfing on a lake in the mountains. My dad was a fanatical yacht sailor so I was sailing from four years old. When I was fourteen I found a windsurfing shop’s catalogue in the mailbox. I saw all these pictures of Robby Naish and Dunkerbeck jumping in Hawaii and immediately I said to myself this is what I want to do. I spent every summer at that lake learning on some windsurfing equipment that I bought out of a newspaper advert. I had no idea what to buy or how to sail it. I have never had any windsurfing lessons in my life. I bought a book, “How to learn windsurfing in ten hours.” That book explained everything from how to rig a sail to the power gybe. Of course it took longer than ten hours! I eventually moved up to a 100 litre Fanatic Mega Ray hard-core slalom board, that I made my mum buy me for my birthday! So it was all down to that book, my Mega Ray, a 6.5 cambered sail, a diving drysuit and eight-degree water. I learned the hard way. When I turned 18 I had to do a year in the army, then after that when I got my driver’s licence I was able to windsurf more as well as doing my studies.