Björn Hansen made a strong impression on all spectators in Marstrand earlier this year. Day after day, he sailed better and better, and for each victory, Björn became more and more humble. “I have a fantastic crew, and they do an amazing job, so I just have to hold the tiller and flow along,” was one of the memorable quotes when Björn and his crew received the large cup at the prize ceremony in Marstrand.

Björn Hansen sails on a world class level and is an easy to like sailor. His genuine social skills, professional attitude to sailing and unique leadership as a skipper are some of his qualities. He showed these qualities during the sailing week in Marstrand in July, controlling the doldrums sailing and rain as well as the stormy winds in the historic finals over Magnus Holmberg.
 

“Obviously, it’s an added value to win over Holmberg in his home waters,” said Björn Hansen, who has sailed in Marstrand four times without winning. He had just returned from Valencia, where he commented on Magnus Holmberg’s efforts on Victory Challenge in Louis Vuitton Cup, as the expert commentator for Viasat during the pre series of America’s Cup. 38 year old Björn Hansen is from Åland, where he lives with his family. Sailing for KSSS, the Master of engineering from KTH has run a Match Racing Centre in Stockholm since 2003, where he trains sailors and companies in the noble art of Match racing. He started Match race sailing in 1994 and never been lower than number 15 on the ISAF world ranking since 2001. 
 
In 1995, he became the world champion in 11 Metre One design and in total he has some ten championship medals in sailing. Just a month ago, he and his crew of Mathias Bredin, Anders Jönsson and Pontus Meijer won the Nordic championship for the second year in a row. Right now, Björn is sixth on the ISAF ranking list, but fifth on the World Match Racing Tour, and one of the five sailors who can become the 2008 world champion.
 
He and his crew are in Malaysia to sail Monsoon Cup, this year’s last event on World Match Racing Tour. The competition is as hard as it gets: Matthieu Richard, who won the finals in Bermuda over Hansen and also the last world tour event in Brazil in November, plus Ian Williams, Paulo Cian, Sebastien Col, and the one and only Peter Gilmour.   If Björn is victorious in the races on the Terengganu River, he will not only get richer – the prize sum is 300 000 dollars – but also make sailing history!