As the march towards Sayulita gathers pace, more and more teams are announcing their lineups for the 4th annual ISA World Stand Up Paddle and Paddleboard Championship.
This week it was Team Canada’s turn in the spotlight, with the Great White North announcing a full squad battle it out in Mexico way from May 10-17. And the lineup looks mighty competitive… → READ MORE
While there have been endless Battle of the Paddle highlight reels in the past week, a new clip out today is one of the slickest yet. Created by Chainsaw Productions for the SIC crew, the video shows Team SIC training at Salt Creek on the eve of the Battle before getting down to business in the Elite Race.
Takes a little while to get going but there’s some awesome race footage near the end. I love the impromptu game of SUP limbo at the 3:34 mark… → READ MORE
It’s been a wild nine days for Lina Augaitis, with victories in California and Hawaii punctuating what has been a big year for the Canadian in general.
Lina quit her job twelve months ago to pursue the dream of being a professional athlete and she hasn’t held back. Barely a race went by this year that she wasn’t a part of: From Florida to Nicaragua to California to Oregon to Europe to Hawaii, the SIC team rider was racking up the frequent flyer miles and stocking up her trophy cabinet.
Several standout performances at the inland races helped build on Lina’s reputation of being one of the fastest women in flat water. Only problem is… the biggest race of the year isn’t held in flat water. The biggest race of the year is the Battle of the Paddle. And this year the BOP was the complete opposite of flat. → READ MORE
The final event of the 2014 Stand Up World Series is happening this weekend has just wrapped up on the North Shore of Oahu. Based out of Turtle Bay, which sits just down the road from famed breaks such as Waimea, Sunset and Pipeline, the World Series Finals will see a very small but hyper-elite band of young guns battle it out in what could be some very interesting conditions.
One week after the all-time, wave-fueled carnage at Salt Creek, the surf at Turtle Bay looks set to throw up another chaotic weekend of racing. Yesterday the North Shore was tipping a solid 10-12 ft plus (20 ft faces) and while the swell is expected to slightly dip today and tomorrow, I’m confident there will be some entertaining chaos to enjoy. → READ MORE
We’ve just wrapped up the 2014 Battle of the Paddle here at Salt Creek, California. What a weekend… Action. Drama. Heroics. But most all: Carnage.
Yesterday’s Elite Race saw some of the most exciting stand up paddle racing ever, with a solid south swell rolling into the BOP’s new home of Salt Creek and creating some very memorable moments. Today’s Distance Race was a little mellower, however the performances were just as strong.
Click through for the full results plus the archive of our LIVE BLOG, which includes play-by-play from the racing and plenty of shots of the carnage… → READ MORE
You may not have noticed if you were tuned to SUPracer.com, but there were actually races happening somewhere other than in the Netherlands on the weekend.
The biggest was Round The Rock in Seattle, a well known race and a staple of the Pacific North West SUP community. Held just outside Seattle, Washington, the main event at Round The Rock is a 13 mile loop of Mercer Island. It’s a long, flat race that attracts large numbers and some serious talent every year.
This year that talent included Canada’s Lina Augaitis and Floridian-turned-Californian Chase Kosterlitz. The two flatwater machines were in fine form, taking out their respective 14′ divisions and also “sweeping” the event in general. → READ MORE
We’ve just wrapped up the second and final day of the 2014 Naish Columbia Gorge Paddle Challenge, with Connor Baxter and Annabel Anderson dominating an all-star field in what will surely be remembered as one of 2014’s best events.
After their respective victories in Saturday’s Course Race, the Starboard duo made it a clean sweep by claiming today’s unique “Double Downwind” event. With the winds lighter than usual for the Gorge (but much better than we’d feared last night), the elite field battled their way up the Columbia Gorge in back-to-back downwind runs. The majority of the world’s top athletes were on show today, which gave us some intense racing and a great spectacle (especially from my vantage point out on the media boat). → READ MORE
Euro Tour. Week 10. Germany. This weekend it was off to the northern German island of Fehmarn, where the “SUP World Cup” kicked off (see what we did there?) with a small but elite field of talent on display. Saturday saw the sprints while Sunday it was the long distance race, with combined results determining the overall event placings. Despite the small field, there were still a few seriously big names battling it out this weekend.
In Saturday’s sprints the Kai/Connor rivalry clicked into gear straight away, with the two young superstars locked in a duel right to the line. Kai narrowly took the honours on day one, however Connor had other ideas for the distance race on day two. → READ MORE
Euro Tour. Week 7. Croatia…
Lina Augaitis and Branislav Sramek won yesterday’s SUPer Surfers Challenge in the beautiful town of Poreč, Croatia. Lina took the win ahead of rising star Manca Notar to continue her Euro Tour winning streak. The SIC team rider was unstoppable at last week’s big Lost Mills race in Germany as she continues to assert herself as one of the fastest flat water paddlers in the world. → READ MORE
Euro Tour. Week #6. Germany.
Eric Terrien has just won the 2014 Lost Mills, repeating his heroics from twelve months ago to claim victory ahead of a star-studded field. In a race that more than lived up to the hype, Eric won by three minutes from Danny Ching and Connor Baxter, while behind them were another dozen of the world’s very best paddlers.
This was an incredibly competitive race – perhaps the single most-elite SUP race ever held outside the States – and it didn’t disappoint. → READ MORE
And that’s a wrap.
The 2014 ISA World StandUp Paddle and Paddleboard Championship has officially come to a close. Congratulations to Team Australia for making it three in a row, though everybody who competed this week deserves a round of applause. Massive event and a lot of fun here in Nicaragua.
As exciting as it was to watch the powerhouse nations put on a show, it was just as good to witness how many emerging paddleboard nations there are. Over 200 athletes from 27 nations came to Nicaragua, and as ISA President Fernando Aguerre point out after the event, this is quickly becoming the ISA’s biggest event in terms of countries competing. It’s a very good sign for the future of the sport.
Thank you for the hospitality Nicaragua. See you somewhere next year… But in the meantime here’s a full recap, results and pics of the final day, plus my takeaways from the event in general. → READ MORE
Well that was a tough race…
Friday, day six, saw the women’s distance event here at the 2014 ISA World SUP and Paddleboard Championship. Both the SUP and prone women hit the water at 9am to begin the 18km trek around the ‘Isletas de Granada’ to the finish line. It was always going to be tough but the conditions were particularly brutal today. Even in the early morning, the sun was blazing hot and the wind was blowing strong across Lake Nicaragua, which produced a stiff headwind for the first few kilometres.
I was fortunate to be sitting on the lead camera boat, which gave me a privileged insight into a race that was held on a distant, exotic and very unique course. So click through for a full race recap, results and pics and then tune in tomorrow morning for the men’s distance race. → READ MORE
Woah… What a race. That was 13 miles of pain. I’m hurting.
Congrats to Danny Ching for muscling his way through this one and to Annabel Anderson for coming out on top despite a huge push from Jenny and Lina. Danny has now won this event three years in a row while Annabel has gone back to back in her first two attempts.
Click through for full results from all the races. → READ MORE
The SoCal SUP community came out in force on the weekend to support some good racing and a good cause. The 2014 Stand Up For Clean Water event was held at Malibu and featured a who’s who of the paddling world, as well as one very large inflatable SUP.
Hundreds of paddlers turned up for the 5 mile, 1 mile and relay races, with all proceeds going to the LA Waterkeeper charity, which is part of the Waterkeeper Alliance and promotes the restoration of local beaches. We’re just waiting on the official results to come through and we’ll have them updated below. In the meantime enjoy some great pics of the action thanks to OnIt Pro. Seriously, how many tens of thousands of race pics have these guys taken over the years? They Facebook’d 1,497 photos from this weekend alone. I kid you not: → READ MORE
Fun little clip of the SIC crew’s recent trip to Mexico for the Punta Sayulita Classic, where team riders Georges Cronsteadt and Lina Augaitis dominated the event. The two world beaters each made a clean sweep, taking out their respective Elite and Distance Races.
As always with SIC clips there’s some cool aerial shots and great race footage mixed in with some words from the paddlers themselves, so sit back and enjoy (and check out the carange at the 55 second mark…). → READ MORE
Results are in from the Punta Sayulita Classic in Mexico and it looks like the weekend belonged to Team SIC. Taking out both events (the Surf Race on Saturday and 10k Distance Race on Sunday) was Georges Cronsteadt of Tahiti, while teammate Lina Augaitis from Canada was too strong on the women’s side.
In the Surf Race, Georges was the only paddler to make it clean to the first buoy, as a set swept through the field right after the start. From there, the Tahitian big guy controlled the waves and the race to finish around half a minute clear. Sayulita locals Ryan Helm and Fernando Stalla filled the men’s podium, with Ryan overtaking Fernando on the sprint up the beach to the line. Meanwhile Shelby Dela Rosa Taylor and Kristin Thomas took second and third respectively on the women’s. → READ MORE
Slater Trout and Lina Augaitis have claimed the first big race of the year, the Orange Bowl Paddle Champs in Florida. Thomas Maximus claimed line honours on his unlimited board, while Slater was pushed to the line by Mexico’s Fernando Stalla and Brazil young gun Vinnicius Martins.
The racing has literally just finished but we’ve got the full results up already so click through to see how it all went down in Miami… → READ MORE
Lina Augaitis, one of the rising stars of the women’s SUP racing scene, has officially signed with SIC.
Still a name that flies under the radar to some degree, I’m predicting 2014 will be a breakout year for Lina and that SIC’s signing will prove to be a very smart move. The new deal caps off a big few months for the Canadian champion, who recently went all in – quitting her comfy teaching job and giving herself 12 months to make it as a professional stand up paddler. That’s a bold move in a sport as fledgling as SUP racing, where even the top guys, let alone top girls, struggle to earn a solid wage. However if her current form is anything to go by, I think we’ll see Lina’s cheerful smile on plenty of podiums in the next 12 months.
I first saw Lina in action at the Tahoe Nalu earlier this year, where she blitzed the field in the 10 miler and turned quite a few heads (including the SIC crew, who were out in full force at that event). Fast forward six weeks to the Battle of the Paddle California and that’s where Lina really made her mark, coming home third (just seconds behind the runner-up) in the Elite Distance Race. That result surprised many, including Lina herself, and helped kickstart her move towards becoming a full-time paddler. → READ MORE
On Monday we asked “what” is the Stand Up Paddle Athletes Association. Well now we know “who” it is as well, with the initial Board of Directors line up revealed. And it’s not too shabby…
The new organisation, which aims to promote the sport by giving the athletes a collective voice, will be helmed by: both of the reigning Molokai-2-Oahu Champions, National Champions, State Champions, European Champions, SUP adventure record holders as well as perhaps the most well-traveled SUP athlete in the world.
In case you missed our story yesterday or have completely avoided Facebook the past 24 hours (seriously, every three seconds I see new “such and such likes SUPAA” pop up in my news feed), here’s the elevator pitch (this is the group’s official “Mission Statement”): → READ MORE
Danny Ching and Lina Augaitis have taken out the 2013 Paddle Royal in Puerto Rico after an incredibly tight second day of racing. Danny claimed the overall victory by winning the final round of racing on Day Two, ending the hopes that both Aussie young gun Jake Jensen and Frenchman Eric Terrien had of flying home with the $7,000 winner’s prize.
Danny had all the work to do after finishing third in yesterday’s Long Distance Race and left it until the very last minute to fight his way back into the lead. Coming into the final round of racing, which consisted of a 200m straight-line sprint, Danny was sitting third on the overall points leaderboard, one point behind Eric and two behind Jake. The reigning champ basically had to win the last race and hope Jake didn’t get second. And that’s exactly what happened, allowing Danny to leapfrog his two close rivals and walk away with the title.
Click through for results, recap and pics from Puerto Rico… → READ MORE
