We are Vikings up here!

see Niklas`blog

Swedish rider Niklas Strahlen turned 22 on the 4th of September 2009, we were talking via Skype about young Vikings, Danish girls and of course professional windsurfing and its effects on everyday life.

Niklas just came home to Goteborg from a freestyle camp he was doing in collaboration with Swedish travel agency Apollo on the greek isle Rhodes, “a great time even though it was a lot to do and think about“. Home is in this case a flat Niklas shares with a friend who “is also unemployed so we have a lot in common“. Strahlen is definitely not the lazy, fast food eating no future kind of unemployed. He is studying Navigation in order to work at the coast guard one day and is going to continue his work with Apollo next easter with a trip to Dahab, but now he is fully into professional windsurfing. When I think about being a professional windsurfer in Sweden the first thing coming to my mind are cold toes. “Haha bullshit.. we are vikings up here you know“, Niklas points out and adds a second later, “but in the winter vikings get small as well!“ One of those young vikings who took part in Niklas´ freestyle camp seamed to have followed instructions closely and is going to compete in the efpt finals on Naxos. This is kind of a proof that the Swedish freestyle scene is a growing one. During the last weeks a lot of European, especially old fashioned German, windsurf magazines somehow wrote windsurfing into crises, “well, thats their problem, I´m still struggling to get a wave at a lot of spots...“ encounters our swedish sailor. 

 

 

S4444 Niklas Strahlen is currently ranked 5th overall yet has chance to finish top 3. During our back to back to back to back tourstops on Sardegna, Lefkas, Alacati and Crete the whole efpt package was together like a huge family going on a month long surfing trip. Asked how it is to compete against friends Niklas types the longest answer during the whole interview into the skypebox “the thing is, that neither one of us started surfing with a competitive thought. If you compare it to football, where they compete when kids are 5 years old! Thats really stupid! We just did it ´cause it was fun and then the competition is second, always!“ Making a pro & con list of windsurfing compared to football, I can´t think of one thing listed pro on the football side, and I do want to believe this is not just an Austrian phenomena. A big plus on the windsurfing part of the list is girls. Hopefully we can do one day some kind of “girlfriend report“ within the efpt, would be nice though we probably would have some deadline up-to-dateness problems. We all know the cliches about Swedish girls being tall, blonde and so on, girls just seam to look better in the north, of course this is an eye-of-the-spectator-thing. After telling Niklas I´ve been to Copenhagen at the beginning of spring and having experienced the same in Denmark he responses “Yeah man, but in denmark they eat too much of the bread with the yellow cream in it. Buttercream man! you don´t wanna know what that shit does to you“. Niklas´ zig-zagging through the windsurfing world lifestyle is yet not compatible with a girlfriend, “I´ve been luckily in love but my life can`t really handle it.. guess it´s the same for most guys on the tour“. 

 

In our interview we were also talking about music, Niklas likes Swedish hip hop, in best case from the band Promoe, and like every kid in Sweden he was running through a tax funded music program which forced him to play the violin at young age. In the last five minutes of the interview we were talking about the future, the future of Niklas, the future of windsurfing and the future of Niklas within windsurfing. Getting one day into business is for sure one thing Niklas can imagine for his years after the active career, he is in connection with also Swedish based Simmer Style Chief Designer Tomas Perrson. „I have considered it for sure because I love the sport and the people“, Strahlen says. Until Niklas either joins the swedish coast guard or gets into the windsurfing business he has to hold up the swedish flag in the efpt. He is already registered for the finals on Naxos, and as, we super stoked about it.

After again almost 2 hours interviewing Niklas the image of a growing up, smart and easy going blonde windsurfer I saw at the events during May and June got consolidated. Follow Niklas on his own windsurfing blog s-4444.com and of course on efpt.net.

pics portrait Hannes Unterweger I bottom pic Walter Angelotti I other Anna Persson

words efpt

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