4 windsurfing coaches, from Aaron McIntosh to Gal Fridman and Mike Gebhardt, each with achievements, years active, athletes coached and nationality.
Every name below comes with the achievements that carry it, the years they were active, the teams or athletes they worked with and their nationality. The order is our own reading of their mark on windsurfing, not a trophy count, and a short FAQ closes the page.
If you are working through the subject more broadly, we keep the same kind of list for windsurfing books and windsurfing films and documentaries.
Best Windsurfing Coaches:
- Aaron McIntosh
- Gal Fridman
- Mike Gebhardt
- Bruce Kendall
#1 Aaron McIntosh
- 🏆 Achievements: Coached the Dutch Olympic windsurfing champions across three Games, which makes him the most successful coach the Olympic class has had.
- 📅 Years Active: Around the 2012, 2016 and 2020 Games
- 👕 Athletes Coached: Dorian van Rijsselberghe, gold in 2012 and 2016, and Kiran Badloe, gold in 2020
- 🌐 Nationality: New Zealand
McIntosh sailed at four Olympic Games himself without winning a medal, then coached three golds in a row for another country.
The Dutch programme handed him a second athlete when the first retired, and Kiran Badloe won in Tokyo with the same preparation, which is the real test of a coaching system.
#2 Gal Fridman
- 🏆 Achievements: Israel’s only Olympic champion, who has coached since retiring and took Tom Reuveny to the iQFoil gold medal in 2024.
- 📅 Years Active: 2008 to today
- 👕 Athletes Coached: Tom Reuveny, Nimrod Mashiah, Maayan Davidovich
- 🌐 Nationality: Israel
Fridman won the Mistral title in Athens 2004, the first Olympic gold medal in Israeli history, and stayed inside the national windsurfing programme afterwards.
Twenty years later one of his riders won the same event on the new foiling equipment, in a class that has almost nothing technically in common with the boards Fridman raced.
#3 Mike Gebhardt
- 🏆 Achievements: Former American Olympic windsurfer who has coached Olympic competitors from more than 25 countries, including Gal Fridman on the way to gold in 2004.
- 📅 Years Active: From about 2000 to today
- 👕 Athletes Coached: Gal Fridman, athletes from over 25 nations
- 🌐 Nationality: United States
Gebhardt took Olympic silver and bronze as a racer and then built a coaching practice that federations hire in rather than employ, which is how most Olympic windsurfing coaching actually works.
Working across that many national teams means his influence on the class is wider than any single medal suggests.
#4 Bruce Kendall
- 🏆 Achievements: Olympic champion of 1988 who later coached the New Zealand Olympic sailing team and the Hong Kong board sailing squad.
- 📅 Years Active: 1996 and again in 2012
- 👕 Athletes Coached: The New Zealand Olympic sailing team in 1996, the Hong Kong board sailing team in 2012
- 🌐 Nationality: New Zealand
Kendall won gold in Seoul 1988 in the Division II class and came from a sailing family that produced two Olympic medallists.
His coaching took him to Hong Kong, one of several Asian federations that imported experienced board sailors to build programmes from scratch.
FAQ
Who is the greatest windsurfing coach of all time?
Aaron McIntosh has the strongest claim: he coached Dutch riders to Olympic gold at three consecutive Games, with two different athletes.
Who was the most successful windsurfing coach?
By Olympic titles, again Aaron McIntosh, with the 2012 and 2016 golds for Dorian van Rijsselberghe and the 2020 gold for Kiran Badloe.
