Björn Dunkerbeck is honest, dependable, generous and straightforward. But what’s more, he is the most successful windsurfer of all times.

Dunki, as Björn Dunkerbeck is commonly called, is literally a ‘man of the world’: The son of a Danish mother and a Dutch father grew up in Denmark and perfectly speaks Norwegian, Swedish, German, English, Spanish and of course Danish, his mother tongue in every sense of the word. Ironically, he hardly speaks Dutch, the language of the country whose citizenship he still holds. At the beginning of the 1970s his father moved the family to Gran Canaria in the Canary Islands where he opened a surfing school at Pozo, the best spot on the island, when Björn was six. However, another two years would pass before Björn climbed onto a board himself and became practically inseparable from the water, training like somebody determined to make waves.

And waves he made. At the age of 15 he already ranked third in the European Championships, at 16 he finished seventh in his first season in the PWA World Tour and dropped school. At 17 he already took second place in the World Tour and everything form the third season on is history. Asked about the number of his World Championship titles, Björn cogitates for a while and then admits that he’s not all to sure. Research reveals that he is twelve-fold PWA Overall World Champion (1988-1999), twelve-fold PWA Race World Champion (1988-1999) and seven-fold PWA Wave World Champion (1990, 1992, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1999, 2001). Moreover, he won the PWA Freestyle World Championships in 1998 as well as the PWA Speed World Championships in 1994 and scores more than 100 single PWA World Cup victories.

Today, Björn no longer takes part in every competition, feels no need to participate in every event. “I do it if I can have fun doing it,” he says. He owns a company on Gran Canaria, Proof (www.proofboard.com) and – apart from trying to break the current World Speed Sailing record – spends a lot of time with his project “The Search” which is all about travelling around the globe looking for the best surfing spots in less-known corners of the world. On many of his future journeys he’ll have company: The windsurfing idol and his wife Maria have a daughter called Alba born in 2003 and a son, Liam Björn, born in 2004. And one may be confident that there’ll be a third generation of Dunkerbecks addicted to windsurfing.