Some people are born with the sea in their blood. Bruno Sroka is one of them.
Yet it was far from the ocean that he grew up, devouring windsurfing magazines and nursing one obsession: pushing the limits of what is possible. Triple kitesurfing world champion, first and only man to have rounded Cape Horn by kite, founder of a leading French watersports brand.
This story is his.
The child who dreamed of gliding
Born in the Paris suburbs, Bruno Sroka grew up not with his feet in the water but on asphalt. At age two, his father put him on a windsurfing board. That was the first spark. This sensation of gliding, this relationship with the elements, became more than a desire: a need.
As a teenager, he dreamed of the ocean through the windsurfing magazines he devoured. This imagination, fed by glossy paper, was already a trademark: what he could not touch, he built in his mind.
As a physical education teacher, this educational grounding would mark him for life: passing on knowledge and making accessible what seemed reserved for an elite.
He practised windsurfing without ever fully committing to it. Something was missing. A second spark.
That spark came in 1999, at age 23, when he crossed paths with Manu Bertin, one of the inventors of kitesurfing. The discipline was in its infancy: a few dozen practitioners in France, rudimentary equipment. But for Bruno, it was a revelation. He gave up windsurfing. No regrets.
Thirteen years later, Bruno would smash the English Channel crossing record held by Manu Bertin. The student becoming the master, the most beautiful of handovers.
He divided his time between kitesurfing and preparing for the CAPEPS, which he obtained a few years later. Competitions, training, studies. Nothing could stop him. He quickly became one of the best in France.
He distinguished himself at the French championships, climbing the steps one by one. In 2004 he won his first major title: world wave vice-champion.
The promise that this would not be the end of it was made that very day.
A legendary record: world domination
Between 2005 and 2013, Bruno Sroka imposed unrivalled domination on the world circuit.
- Three-time kitesurfing world champion: 2007, 2009, 2010, on the KPWT and PKRA circuits
- Three-time Cup of the World winner.
- Four-time European champion
- Three-time French champion.
The year 2009 will remain engraved in the annals: out of 14 international competitions, he won 12 and reached the podium 15 times. Even today, it is one of the most impressive statistics in the history of the circuit.
At a time when the discipline was still searching for sporting legitimacy, Bruno championed a technical and demanding vision of kite. A pioneer once again, he worked as early as 2009 with Italian designer Paolo Rista on the world's first kiterace boards. Inspired by windsurfing, they enabled flat-water riding that shook up the discipline. Equipment innovation, for Bruno, did not come at the end of a career when he no longer knew what to do: it was already there, at the peak.
At 36, Bruno Sroka is one of the essential figures of his generation. Not only in France, but on a global scale.
The adventurer of extreme seas
But for Bruno, competition was only a stage. What he loves is the open sea and the challenges nobody dares to take on. His expeditions have become global references for endurance and commitment. They have written his name into the legend of long-distance kitesurfing.
Cape Horn, a world first
In 2008, at the height of his sporting career, he set himself a challenge that belonged to no one: crossing Cape Horn by kitesurfing. The legendary passage of great sailors, where waves form and where the sea, quite simply, shows no mercy.
The weather window opened on April 9. At six in the morning, Wolf, his skipper, woke him: "Bruno, it's now or never." Wind above 40 knots, sub-zero temperatures, water close to freezing. He pulled on his wetsuit, rigged a 7-metre kite and dove into the water.
For nearly 9 hours, he sailed in extreme conditions: winds at 80 km/h, 4-metre waves, choppy and icy seas. One hundred nautical miles (186 kilometres) wrested from the most feared ocean on the planet. He lost 4 kilos. He did not sleep the following night, adrenaline running too high, his mind stuck in the loop of waves and wind.
No one has made the crossing since. Bruno Sroka remains, to this day, the only man in the world to have crossed Cape Horn by kitesurfing. More than a record, it was the moment when the athlete became an adventurer.
The English Channel record
Four years after Cape Horn, Bruno Sroka tackles another myth, closer to home: the crossing of the English Channel. On May 17, 2012, a few weeks before the London Olympics, Bruno sails from Brittany to Plymouth (100 nautical miles, 186 kilometres) through one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world.
