I already noticed Benny in Hamburg as a skate kid at the “Labskaus Jams” and in the “I-Punkt Halle”. Since he was often involved with Simon Schulz back then and Simon rode for the brand “ÜBER Skateboards”, I thought that Benny was also integrated into the team at “ÜBER Skateboards”.
At some point I asked Thomas Tröger (then team manager at ÜBER) if he had any ideas about who could ride for Morphium in Hamburg. To my astonishment, Thomas immediately suggested Benny and explained to me that although Benny occasionally drives the ÜBER decks, he has nothing else to do with them. As I saw a lot of potential in Benny myself and he always made a good impression on me as a person, I got in touch with him. He then immediately agreed that he was up for driving for Morphium.

As he tends to be a rather shy and quiet person, we were relatively distant at first. But when we met in the evening at the “Hamburger Berg” in a party mood, the distance was over and we got on very well. Over time, we built up a very good relationship and had a lot to do with each other. The highlight was when he moved into my girlfriend’s flat and became her flatmate. As I was also there almost every day, it eventually came to blows, which completely disrupted our previously good personal relationship. As a result, he moved out of my girlfriend’s place without further ado and only got in touch when he needed a new deck. As we are both pretty stubborn and the situation hasn’t improved, I suggested to him whether it wouldn’t be better if he rode for “VIA Skateboards”. Most of his closest friends were on the VIA team, which might have made him feel more at home. I actually thought that he would have considered it anyway, but to my astonishment that didn’t seem to be the case. His reaction was rather surprised that I had made the suggestion to him. He said that he didn’t know whether that would even be possible, as the VIA team was already quite full and he would have to clarify that first, but he wanted to take care of it and find out. That took out all the pressure that had previously built up between us, and since then we’ve been getting on very well again.

Bringing him in as a team rider was exactly the right decision at the time, because after the departure of Dennis Klüssendorf there had to be a new team rider as a figurehead for Morphium. Benny filled this position perfectly during his time as a Morphium team rider. He did really well and his skating attracted a lot of attention throughout Germany and he was able to present himself well in the media. This has helped Morphium make good progress and he has been able to burn the brand into the minds of some skaters. I hope that he can push VIA Skateboards in the same way and that he feels comfortable there.

We also thought that we could open up the skateboard market in Groningen and the Netherlands through Klaas van der Laan. Unfortunately, that didn’t work out, even though he was riding for the biggest skateboard distributor in the Netherlands at the time.

So he had been selling morphine stuff among his colleagues and friends on his own for a long time.

Towards 2006 he withdrew from skating and told me honestly that as a sponsored skater he could no longer perform as well as he thought he should. They parted ways and shortly afterwards he and a few friends tried to set up a skateboard company called “Broken Skateboards”, which unfortunately no longer exists.