The Danish Viking, Casper Steinfath, has showed strong early season form by claiming the Mickey Munoz Mongoose Cup in Dana Point yesterday. While the Mongoose Cup draws hundreds of paddlers and is more about celebrating the sport of SUP in general, rather than just being a pure race, the focus was on the sprint race final after Casper created the photo of the day with his lightning start.

Looking like he was holding a hover board instead of a SUP, Casper fired off the line and never looked back, crossing the line ahead of the speedy dark-horse Sean Pangelinan (expect to see that name more this year…). Filling the minor places were young gun Noa Hopper and Frenchman Greg Closier, who seems to spend as much time in California as he does in France.

Meanwhile in the women’s race it was another younsger Shae Foudy who took the honours at Dana Point’s Baby Beach.

The Mongoose Cup also included a big paddle out tribute to Bob Risner, a very popular figure in the SUP community who passed away last month.

As always, OnIt Pro has quite literally thousands of pics of the event up on Facebook. Here’s gallery 1, gallery 2 and gallery 3.

2014 Mickey Munoz Mongoose Cup

The “Sport of Kings” Race – Top Finishers

MEN
1st: Casper Steinfath
2nd: Sean Pangelinan
3rd: Noa Hopper
4th: Greg Closier
5th: Karl Ring
6th: Jeremy Vaine
7th: Brandon Light
8th: Brian Hagg
9th: Trevor Bashor

WOMEN
1st: Shae Foudy
2nd: Sarah Messina
3rd: Aleanna Clark
4th: Christie Shoemaker
5th: Diane Wenzel
6th: Melissa Hillis
7th: Mel Plunkett
8th: Loraine Gruber
9th: Maggie Adams