After taking a year out of competition, 10-times British windsurfing champion Keith Atkinson is already staking a strong claim to add to his title haul this summer.

And the 25-year-old’s impressive start to the season has coincided with a return to Dartford, his home town.

Atkinson (pictured) has won all but one of the races he has taken part in so far this season and is again showing the kind of form that lifted him to No.4 in the world rankings in the Formula windsurfing class.

Atkinson’s first event of the season was a UK Windsurfing Association national inland event at Pitsford, near Northampton, where he won all four of his races despite having broken three toes just three weeks earlier in training.

He then continued his winning ways in the first of the UKWA National Cup events at Weymouth.

Last Saturday, he raced in the Rutland Windsurfing Marathon on Rutland Water. Having won the event in 2004 and 2007, Atkinson completed a hat-trick of successes by finishing over four minutes ahead of the runner-up in a field of some 150 competitors.

This Saturday, Atkinson is action again in another National Cup event, at Christchurch, in Dorset.