I don’t care if this is a blatant ad for Naish or not: These photos are awesome.

For those in the Southern Hemisphere enjoying a scorching Summer right now, spare a thought for our SUP racing friends in Europe. The continent has enjoyed (or endured) a particularly authentic Winter the past couple of months, with super low temperatures and plenty of snow & ice, none of which are particularly useful if you’re a Stand Up Paddler.

Unless, that is, you’re a creative type like Slovenia’s young gun Manca Notar…

Manca is one of Europe’s rising stars, recording some impressive results in 2012 and picking up a deal with Naish International along the way. The yellow board brand from Maui must be pretty stoked with their find, because every week Manca seems to be posting some cool little snaps of her race boards on Instagram and Facebook.

 

It’s a good lesson for paddlers that wanna promote themselves and give their sponsors more reason to pay them. It doesn’t necessarily matter if you win races or not, so long as you’re giving your brand free advertising. Manca is a perfect example; she’d probably still be a virtual unknown outside of Europe if it wasn’t for her creative photos, which often go viral and give her way more exposure than the average race victory.

So yes, these snow SUP shots are an obvious promo for her sponsor, but there’s something about Manca’s photos that caught my eye: they’re fun and it’s creative, so it doesn’t matter whether it’s an “ad” or not.

This isn’t the first time the young Slovenian has been combining SUP with snow either, check out some of Manca Notar’s other snaps below: