Michele Becker’s first full year on the PWA World Tour couldn’t have gone much better with the German finishing fifth overall. We caught up with Michele to find out more about him, his dream first season and expectations for 2024.
Words: Michele Becker Photos: Carter/pwaworldtour.com & Medano.
My dad is still windsurfing, and at the time, so were my grandparents. You could say since the early days that windsurfing is a part of our family. At the age of nine I learned windsurfing at a windsurfing school during my school holidays.
It was a mix of two things: First of all, I didn’t want to spend so much money to compete on the full World Tour without being competitive enough. There is no shame in finishing at the back of the rankings, but as I had to watch my budget, I didn’t see the reason to rush in. And the second reason is that we have a very well organised tour in Germany with a pretty high level. For me, it was just natural to try to be one of the best on the national tour first before committing to international tours. Luckily, my sponsors also saw it that way.
I remember exactly how I said in one of my YouTube videos before last season that my goal was to be in the top 15, but that I believed I could make it into the top 10 at a good event. Most people agreed with me, but some also said that it was quite brave to enter my first full year on the World Tour and place those goals. In the end I have to admit that I was as surprised by my performance as everyone else was. To me it still feels like I skipped a complete season because I have had such a big jump in performance and results last year.
I have been fortunate enough to spend all winter training in Tenerife for the last few years already, which means I take part in the weekly training that is held four times a week. There we hold races just like in a real competition and every day I focus on a different aspect of the race. Off the water I do a lot of work too. I go to the gym almost daily – concentrating on anything from mobility and yoga to core workouts and strength training. All of which is to ensure I maintain enough body weight to stay competitive, but also mainly to stay healthy and feel good on the water. I’m not doing much separate cardio in Tenerife as the workload from the actual windsurf training is immense!
Indeed, I finished an apprenticeship as an industrial clerk in 2020. For me it was important to have a backup plan as pro windsurfing is not really for the long-term. After that I wanted to solely focus on professional windsurfing again, but as COVID made traveling and competing so much harder, I decided to start studying Electrical Engineering. Until today I am studying some courses here and there whenever I have time due to injuries or whatever, but fortunately most of my time and focus only goes into windsurfing and everything that comes with it.
I really want to keep my mindset from last season. Just going out there and trying to win some races! Usually, I tend to play it too safe when I am aiming for a certain result so I don’t want to create some unnecessary pressure in my mind.
Probably it will be cool to watch sometimes, but I think a lot of people forget how monotone fin racing can be and how sensitive it is to changes in wind conditions. I personally won’t compete in Slalom X because my level on fin is not as high as in foiling and I don’t want to split my time trying to train both.
To me foiling added a new dimension to windsurf racing. It allows for completely different approaches and the races themselves are more thrilling in my opinion because overtaking and costly mistakes are more common than when competing on a fin. At the same time, I like that the wind range is much bigger for one setup, so fewer races have to be cancelled. This also makes free sailing less stressful.
I think I have good instincts and somehow in racing I always do better and I am faster than in training. Other than that, I have a good feeling for my gear which helps me in the gybes for example. Although I can’t deny that last year I had the advantage of the PATRIK AEON Foil, which more riders will use for the coming season. I have a lot of small things in my mind that I want to improve… without revealing any secrets, I think it is obvious that becoming faster is one of the big things for this season.
Looking back to last year it is quite funny. It was originally planned that I would grow into the R&D over the next years. However, with every PWA event that passed I became more and more involved already. So much so, that in Fuerteventura I was testing the new 2024 foil sail concepts with Alex Cousin and was heavily involved in the discussions about the foil for this year. Overall, the main guys who developed the current gear are still Alex Cousin and Nico Warembourg, who are led by Patrik Diethelm himself. I really like to test and work on the windsurf gear, so for sure I will keep growing into it even more.
In windsurfing, I don’t really have any idols anymore. I think this becomes a bit lost once you compete on the same tier of competition as them and maybe even have to beat them. In the early days I wanted to become a freestyler, so I was inspired by Steven Van Broeckhoven, who started his professional journey also quite late on in comparison to others. When I got more into racing it was Vincent Langer. Nowadays, I get inspired by other sports such as American Football where J.J. Watt and Patrick Mahomes are two of my favourite players.
Highs are definitely all of 2023! For me, the toughest year was definitely 2019. In 2018 foiling was introduced to the German Windsurf Tour, so the discipline was still really new. However, at the beginning of the 2019 season, I was diagnosed with Epstein-Barr virus, which prevented me from playing any sports until November that year. That meant I was fully out of shape and everyone around me made huge progress in the new foiling discipline, while I could only sit and watch. In the end, the best thing was that it was during my apprenticeship, so I could at least make use of that time.
“Do what others don’t, to achieve what others won’t”. This helps me to focus on myself and do what I think is right for me.
This one is not quite from traveling, but from a training day at home: When I entered the water with my foil gear a woman ran towards me and told me that her little kid lost a swimming ring that looked like a unicorn while she was pointing at the water. So I made it my mission to bring it back. It turned out the unicorn was drifting downwind and was hiding in the waves on a sandbar so I had to try three times to stop and grab it, which took about half an hour. When I came back upwind and back to the beach the woman was gone. I thought she couldn’t be too far and started jogging further upwind on the beach. After several minutes I still didn’t find her, so I gave this unicorn to another family and went back to training. I wish I had captured this unsuccessful mission on an action cam!
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