Kristin Boese

Kristin Boese, born on 1 July 1977 in Potsdam in what was then East Germany, is a German kitesurfer who won professional world titles in freestyle, course racing and wave riding. She grew up playing a wide range of sports and was a semiprofessional handball player from 1986 to 1999, then trained as a windsurf instructor in 2000 while studying journalism and communication in Berlin. After meeting a kitesurfer at her windsurf centre in 2002 she moved to Fuerteventura in the Canary Islands to learn the sport and teach it. She became German kitesurf champion, finished fourth in the 2003 PKRA world ranking, was vice world champion in 2004 and won the PKRA Freestyle title in 2005 and 2006. In 2008 she was the KPWT Course Race world champion, and in 2009 the International Sailing Federation shortlisted her for its World Sailor of the Year awards. In 2012 she took bronze at the Slalom World Championships. She founded the KB4girls foundation, now the Women's Kiteboarding Collective, to support women in kiteboarding, and wrote two instructional books and a DVD on kitesurfing.