Date Added: 2008-02-14

SOUTHAMPTON powerboat king Steve Curtis has his sights set on an unprecedented NINTH world title this year.

However, the 43-year-old will have to achieve his goal without long-time Class 1 racing partner Bjorn Gjelsten. The Norwegian announced his retirement at the end of last season, bringing ten-years with Hythe-based Curtis and the most successful partnership in the sport’s history to a close.

Curtis, 43, will now race with Sheikh Hassan bin Jabor Al-Thani in the Qatar Team, which is sponsored by the Qatar government. But despite losing his long-time partner, Curtis said his ambition and desire to excel in the sport had not diminished. “I would like to win the championship,”
he said. “This year, with the new team, it’s a new challenge, but it should be good. “Bjorn and I had an incredible career together, we were the most successful team ever and that was great. “It was almost like a marriage. “He’s a great friend of mine. I was always a bit crazy and out of control and he was always very calm. “He got to the point where he had done everything he wanted to achieve in the sport and if he had carried on he would have been trying to grab something that wasn’t there.”

However, despite the eight world titles and four European Championships, Curtis has no intention of retiring himself. “I’ve got until I get in the boat and I’m not comfy in it anymore,” he said. Curtis jets off to Doha on

February 21 for testing on the Qatar Team boat, before the first of eight races in the Class 1 season begins on March 1 in Qatar’s capital. Curtis also this year plans to oversee the continued growth of the sport’s premier UK competition, the Honda Formula 4-Stroke Powerboat Series, which he helped launch in 1999. With its headquarters in Hamble, the five-race event, in which competitors use identical specification boats, has grown at a rapid pace and starts its 2008 season in May. “It’s going to be our best season yet,” said Curtis, who was awarded an MBE in 2006. “Powerboat racing is seen as very elitist, expensive and you can’t get involved. “I felt, with Honda, there was a huge market for people, who were willing to work to get sponsors, that could go and race and sit in the start line with an equal boat to everyone else, instead of it being chequebook racing. “The quality of the boats and drivers is getting better, so the whole thing is stepping up year after year. “We’ve got more competitors than ever before, we’re probably close to 45 boats. “For a Hampshire-based boat company, it’s been a staggering success.”