Will the ICF’s Junior Races Survive the New One Design Mandate?
In a flurry of rule changes for 2025, the new One Design mandate for SUP juniors was dropped like a lead balloon. All juniors, athletes under age 18, will be required to use a single “One Design” hard board for SUP at ICF competitions. Their stated reasoning? Accessibility. But athletes are concerned, and some juniors have already decided not to race ICF events because of One Design.
The 2025 season starts with a splash
The 2025 sprint season kicked off last weekend in a pool in Dusseldorf. An indoor pool may not sound like the most exciting location for a race, but the SUP event made a splash as part of the larger Düsseldorf Boat Show. And really, in January, where could be better for the athletes than a toasty warm pool facing off their biggest rivals in head to head sprint technicals?
The boundary of possible: what happened at Last Paddler Standing 2024
Forty-eight hours after the race started on a beautiful but breezy Saturday morning, the wind was picking up at Nathan Benderson Park in Sarasota, Florida. It had already been the windiest, coldest Last Paddler Standing ever: when temperature dropped to 50°F (10°C) on the first night, strong racers who made it through the first day […]
ICF SUP World Champs 2024: Faster speeds, action-packed racing, new stars
What a weekend! By most measures (every measure except for DQs and beach starts, perhaps), the ICF SUP World Championships in Sarasota, Florida was a success. 2024 has been a pretty good year for world championships, and with most (not all) top names attending both the ISA and ICF events, it looks like SUP racing […]
A play-by-play recap of the Thames 200 Ultra. Is this new race the UK’s SUP 11 Cities?
9 SUP and prone paddle boarders started the inaugural Thames 200 Ultra. 4 finished. Gavin Symonds set a new record for fastest SUP of the Thames: 29 hours 19 minutes. What was the race like, and could it really be the UK's answer to SUP 11 Cities?
Can “that prone guy” set a new record for the Thames River?
James Fletcher aka “that prone guy" is the type of person who looks at the craziest endurance challenges for stand up paddle boarders and thinks, “I can do that prone.” And then he does. He's set records before, but 200 km down the Thames is like nothing he's ever done - will he pull it off?
The ultra that finishes in front of parliament: England’s most brutal paddling race
"I can do anything now." Devizes to Westminster (DW) is Britain's oldest and most iconic "type 2 fun" ultra paddling race.