Yesterday we looked at the fastest men on the water, now it’s time to cap off the year with a look at the quickest ladies.
It was a big year for women’s racing with several athletes hitting the podiums for the first time to inject some fresh storylines into an aging saga. There was also the unmissable #ipaddleforequality movement in October, which aims to give women a more equal share of the prize money purse and which briefly broke stand up paddling’s little corner of the internet. → READ MORE
Annabel Anderson has won the first gold medal of the 2017 ISA Worlds in Denmark, putting on a vintage performance to break away from a large, elite field in this morning’s 18km marathon event to earn 1000 valuable team points for New Zealand.
The world number one, who had to borrow a Starboard after her equipment was lost in transit, sat with the front pack on the first of four laps around this long but rather technical course in front of Copenhagen’s famous opera house. But as the field started to whittle on the second lap, Annabel put her foot down and broke away, paddling clear to win by two minutes in a time of just over two hours.
With the Kiwi setting a lone pace out front, the real race became the battle for the silver medal, with Starboard team mates Sonni Honscheid (Germany), Olivia Piana (France) and Fiona Wylde (USA) establishing themselves as the strongest contenders after the early draft train of 11 top women started splintering in the second half of the race. → READ MORE
In brief: Michael Booth and Olivia Piana have put an exclamation point on their European summers of SUP, with the Starboard duo taking out week 9 of the EuroTour here at the SUP World Cup in Scharbeutz, Germany.
Boothy won the 10k distance race here on Sunday morning in impressive style, while Olivia fought all the way with her team mate Sonni Honscheid before pulling clear in the final few hundred metres. → READ MORE
In brief: As if we needed any more of a reminder that Tahiti’s powerful paddling warriors are on the verge of dominating long distance SUP racing in the same way they’ve done for years in the outrigger world, just take a look at the Lost Mills results from the weekend where Tahiti claimed all four top spots courtesy of Steeve Teihotaata, Georges Cronsteadt, Enzo Bennett and Bruno Tauhiro.
Going a couple of spots better than they did in Carolina, where Georges was 3rd and Steeve finished 4th, Tahiti’s star duo were clearly too strong for everyone else in the field except for fellow Tahitian Enzo Bennett, better known as a sprinter but clearly someone who has some endurance potential after he hung onto the lead pack right to the line. → READ MORE
Michael Booth has taken a virtually unassailable lead in the race for the 2017 EuroTour championship title, with the Aussie powerhouse claiming his second straight win at the Bilbao Paddle Challenge as key rivals Connor Baxter and Titouan Puyo faultered.
After a hectic start in front of Bilbao’s Guggenheim Museum, where several of the main contenders were boxed out by a deep field of European dark horses, Boothy soon moved to the front and controlled much of the 14km course up and down the central city river. → READ MORE
In brief: Michael Booth has cemented his reputation as the strongest stand up paddler on the planet, taking out week 5 of the EuroTour in impressive fashion after breaking an elite field that included Connor Baxter, Titouan Puyo, Georges Cronsteadt, Mo Freitas and many more of the world’s best.
After the opening stages of the race were marked by the presence of rival draft trains spread out in parallel, the contest soon settled down into a more traditional draft train, with the front pack at one point turning into an unsustainable 21-man convoy.
Boothy broke the field relatively early today – at about the 4km mark of the 18km crossing between Switzerland and France – and would never be caught, slowly extending his lead all the way back to the finish line in the host town of Thonon-les-Bains. → READ MORE
Connor Baxter has just won the Beach Race to make it a clean sweep of the weekend and claim the 2017 Hossegor Paddle Games overall title ahead of his key EuroTour rivals and fellow world-beaters Michael Booth and Titouan Puyo.
In the women’s, Frenchwoman Olivia Piana showed her true potential to take out the beach race ahead of yesterday’s winner Sonni Honscheid. But Olivia fell painfully short of the overall title, losing to Sonni by just 3 seconds on the tie-breaker time countback. → READ MORE
Australia’s Michael Booth has proven yet again that he’s the strongest distance race paddler on the planet, overpowering world number one Connor Baxter and Carolina Cup champion Titouan Puyo to claim the 18km event on day 2 here in St. Maxime, France, earning the overall ‘SUP Race Cup’ title and gaining an early advantage on the EuroTour Leaderboard in the process.
With beautiful blue skies and flat, glassy conditions greeting the assembled field of international stars, European dark horses and local contenders this morning (which stood in stark contrast to the cyclonic winds in Saturday’s beach race), this was always going to be Boothy’s type of race.
It was 12 months ago this weekend that the Starboard rider announced himself as the strongest distance racer in the world, and after a few disappointing results early in season 2017 he was clearly keen to reassert his dominance. → READ MORE
Australia’s Terrene Black has made it two from two on the APP Tour, mirroring her Maui result at the Japan Pro-Am after outlasting Fiona Wylde, Candice Appleby and Sonni Honscheid in a weekend of rollercoaster results and conditions that produced a virtual tie in the small but elite women’s field.
The result boosts Terrene into the ultra-exclusive ‘Top Five Club’ on the updated World Rankings, with the Japan Pro-Am scoring 38% on the women’s Race Index. → READ MORE
World number one Annabel Anderson and Sunova’s James Casey have taken out the weather-affected OluKai Ho’olaulea race on Maui this morning, winning the modified ‘beach race’ event at Kanaha after the standard Maliko downwind run was canceled for the second time in two days following wild and unsafe conditions.
With swirling winds and stormy weather continuing to lash the Hawaiian coast, OluKai organisers wisely opted for safety over tradition, keeping the event inside the reef at Kanaha Beach Park instead of sending competitors on what would have been a somewhat-treacherous ocean paddle from Maliko Gulch. → READ MORE
In brief: Yoann Cronsteadt has upset the titans of Tahitian stand up paddling to claim the 2-star Air France Paddle Festival ahead of his well-known brother Georges and fellow internationals Steeve Teihotaata and Rete Ebb, while Sonni Honscheid has saluted in the women’s race.
Click through to see the full results from Tahiti… → READ MORE
In brief: Michael Booth and Sonni Hönscheid have saluted on day two of the 5-star Maui Pro-Am after winning a long, hot, windless Maliko downwind run that tested the endurance and stamina of the small but highly elite field of assembled athletes.
Despite the relatively flat conditions, there was just enough texture on the water to break up any draft trains, with Boothy powering away from the field early and crossing the line about a minute clear of Connor Baxter. Mo Freitas was another minute further adrift in a strong performance that saw him claim the overall event crown. → READ MORE
It’s International Women’s Day, and while we try and promote the women’s side of the sport as much as possible every day here at SUP Racer, we felt it was a good time to give the fastest females some extra credit.
So here it is, our Insta slideshow highlighting 10 of the best women on the water in the world of paddleboarding. → READ MORE
In a major move that’s sure to create waves, world number three and ‘Queen of Molokai’ Sonni Hönscheid announced today that she’s departing SIC to join Team Starboard for season 2017.
In what is an massive pickup for the Tiki team, the current world number three will join the likes of Connor Baxter, Michael Booth, Fiona Wylde and a dozen more of the world’s best paddlers on the famous blue boards to create an absolutely formidable lineup. → READ MORE
After revealing the Top 16 Men of 2016 yesterday, now it’s time to analyse the best-performing women.
It’s been an interesting season for the women’s sport, with some absolutely incredible performances from amazing athletes in exciting races. But at the same time there’s been a noticeable lack of growth in participation at the elite level relative to the men, which makes producing an accurate world rankings and authoritative power rankings somewhat difficult. → READ MORE
Sonni Hönscheid needs no introduction. The German powerhouse proved she’s one of the strongest paddlers in the world this year, claiming a record third-straight Molokai 2 Oahu crown along with back-to-back EuroTour titles.
However most people in the paddling community still don’t know Sonnni all that well. She’s quiet, humble and not too fussed about making a fuss. → READ MORE
