We have caught up with the new BWA Pro Champion, Phil Horrocks, to find out his tour highlights and why he decided to focus his time in the UK this year…

Gallery – A year in the life of Phil Horrocks

Highlights of the tour this year was Rhosneigr I would say. There we had some really fun solid windsurfing; the kind that everybody likes! It was fully windy, nice clean waves, not amazing, side on but still fun sessions. The event was super competitive as everyone had been sailing hard all winter and all the boys were keen to throw down there moves. That came down to a me and Lewis show down, and I ended up victorious, great feeling especially at your home spot with the support of all the locals!

South Africa was a whirlwind this winter, just the most epic trip for me, killer conditions, a new addition to the family and Maike on maternity leave so it was all just perfect… But, at the beginning of the year I knew things couldn’t stay like that, reality catches up. I wasn’t sure how things would pan out for the year and couldn’t commit to doing the PWA tour on my level of support. Maike had to go back to work, Keira goes to nursery and I have lots of work to do, the childcare costs and general bills all keep coming and need paying!

I didn’t want to miss too many of those special moments either, the ones you will only ever get once, when your first born baby walks, talks, puts on her own shoes, the last place i wanted to be was sitting on some rock in the canary islands or northern europe waiting for wind and wishing i was somewhere else. So i came to a simple decision of priority i suppose, time is more precious, so i want to spend it either with my family or going on windsurf trips that really mean something, like scoring those epic conditions we had up in Scotland with Jamie Hancock just recently!!

It’s awesome to be 2 x champ, it proves that I wasn’t just lucky last time!! if I look at it things have gone pretty well over the last couple of years, 3 wins in a row in rhosneigr i think? 3 wins out of the last 4 events in Cornwall is it ? it’s great satisfaction when you put a lot of effort into things and it comes off..

There was a little pressure going into Cornwall I suppose, although i didn’t really feel like the favourite going into it, i missed the whole Canaries this summer which is normally good jumping practise for the autumn events, plus i knew Adam and Ben were sailing really good of late so i wasn’t expecting in, awesome though that things worked out just right!