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After the success of the ISA World Championships held a few months ago in Copenhagen, Denmark I would have expected the ICF to build on that and make their event bigger and better. And they almost succeeded but, in my opinion, they fell short.
Instead of presenting a better World Championship to the world, the ICF decided to take a few steps backwards with the development of SUP racing as a showcase for the sport and the athletes taking part.
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| Considering the future of SUP Racing |
Going backwards
I had intended to lead this blog with the title ‘Money’ but more important, I think, is to reflect on my second blog (link here) where I tried to focus on consistent race disciplines. In that blog, I made the following statement
“… The Technical Race is almost standardised now, with a running start on a W or M shaped course with a turn on land requiring a dismount and a running finish. All that is needed here is to set a distance, between 3 and 6km would seem to hit the sweet spot for this event.”
How wrong I was thinking that the technical race was ‘almost standardised’.
I also touched on the importance of growing the audience for SUP Racing events, and here was another step backwards taken by the ICF by restricting that audience with a Paywall.
And then, as if I had some sort of crystal ball, the subject of the rules and interpretation thereof, raised its head with the disqualification of two very high-profile athletes in the ladies' technical race.
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| SUP Racing - Image ICF / Romain Bruneau |
Finding the positives
It is very easy to criticise from a distance so let's start with the positives from the event. The ICF and event organisers in Florida had done a fantastic job leading up to the event, all of the information they had published prior to the event weekend was clear and easy to understand and covered everything from accommodation and transport to doping control. The sport must be maturing if we now have to worry about idiots doping!
In that detailed information was all the important stuff for athletes, details for the four world championship title events. Everything was clearly laid out, course maps, distances, timetables for athletes, registration, and board checks. If you take a look at the last bulletin issued (link here) you should be impressed.
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| Check out the ICF website |
The social media posts from athletes at the venue in the days leading up to the first day of racing reflected this professionalism, other than the inclement weather proving that Florida does indeed have winter, I saw no criticism of the event. None. Everything was positive. Athletes were training at the venue and dialling in the more technical aspects of the race, fine-tuning before the big days ahead.
During the racing the organisers and event staff did a great job of keeping things running, this was possibly the biggest SUP Championships so far with over 500 racers in 4 different disciplines and multiple age categories for both men and women.
The 2024 ICF SUP World Championships were HUGE by any measurement.
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| The leading pack in the Open Men's long-distance. Image ICF/Planet Canoe |
Team Tactics
One thing I noticed, and I am not sure any other observer has commented on this, is the possible evolution of Team Tactics. Again this is something I have thought about out loud in this blog and it could be a big thing in the sport.
"In the distance race drafting is the most obvious example where increased team sizes could make a difference, especially over a longer course. Paddlers working together for their team leader, allowing that leader to save energy for the finish. But that is not the only way larger teams could work, a strong team could send one paddler off from the start, sprinting ahead to see if it breaks the field knowing that their teammates could benefit later. Or use teammates to mark other strong paddlers, sticking on their tail if they try to make a break early and their team leader is unable to respond. "
I think this event might have been the first time teammates have worked together for a result, although I didn’t see it because that race is still behind the paywall! YouTube coverage from StandUpMagazin is, at the time of typing, the only coverage of men’s long-distance race that I can find
In this coverage, Mike from StandUPMagazin mentions that Rai Taguchi is occasionally sprinting to the front of the pack and then slowing down. This could have been Rai testing the strength of his competitors but combine his tactics with some more information and maybe your view will change.
In an interview after the event Suri Araki, AKA Shrimpy reveals that he fell at the start. Something obviously happened to cause a few top paddlers to take a swim becasue Blue Ewer and Bodie Von Allmen mention swimming as well. Shrimpy would have had to work hard to get back to the leading pack, using a lot of energy.
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| Rai Taguchi in action in the Sprint. Image - ICF / Romain Bruneau. |
Then, with the finish in sight, Shrimpy sprinted past the leading pack and the rest is, as they say, history. A victory for Team Japan.
A lot of positives from the event but, from a distance, it seems that there were some things that could have been better.
The Technical Race
Before the event, it was apparent that the ICF Technical race was going to be a bit short at only 800m and with only 1 lap. That put a lot of pressure on athletes to get out of the first turn in a good position as, with no waves or current to work with, overtaking after that buoy was going to be difficult. But at least there was a chance to pass with the beach run and re-entry to the water.
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| World Champion Noic Garioud at the start of a Technical Race. Image ICF / Romain Bruneau |
Changes
I confess that I have not looked for the logic behind the massive change to the Technical Race, the first I knew was an Instagram post from Christian Taucher, a Sunova team member, respected coach and someone I did a quick interview with when I worked in media. He is eloquent, educated and usually reserved, so for him to make the critical post he did was surprising.
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| Chris Taucher Instagram |
Suddenly gone were the components of the technical race that make it… technical. No beach start and no mid-course run. Replaced with a clumsy sit on the board in the water start and a normal, on-water buoy turn. The course was already too short at 800m but at least it had been a tech race. Now it was a complicated sprint with a start that anyone could do but few had practised.
Christian’s post included that he had been practising his starts for months in advance, 400 starts was the number he used, replicating, as well as he could, the conditions that he knew were at the venue. The challenge he focused on was the very quick transition from shallow water to deep at the start line and the beach turn.
Christian was not the only one focusing on the triky start, the feature image for this blog is Boothy practising his starts at the venue in the days before the event.
Explanation - Not from the ICF
As it happens there was a very informative reply to his Instagram post from another athlete, local paddler and now World Champion Katniss Paris. She explained the difficulties at the venue and that there had been an effort to make things better in time for the event. That attempt went wrong, it was to use her words ‘botched’. I have paraphrased her reply but it appears that prep work uncovered previously hidden hazards to the paddlers forcing the late change.
Here is part of her reply
“I must reiterate for those who don't live here and do not know, the state of the beach was NOT what they had planned for. The shoreline was EXCAVATED a few days prior to the event and this changed EVERYTHING. Had they not performed this prior to the event we would have had a less hazardous beach start, though they still needed to address the exposed rebar and other hazards. Us locals have been telling them of these submerged hazards for many months, the issue was the botched hazard remediation, and thus we lost our beach start”
So, rather than making the start easier for some, which I must confess was my first thought when I saw the change, the organisers made it safer for all.
Communication
It seems that the ICF failed to communicate this to all of the athletes at the venue, resulting in Christian’s Instagram post, and to those who were following the championship via social media. I would hope that the commentary team had information about the forced change and communicated that to viewers paying to watch but that then got missed from the Social Media highlights being issued by the ICF media team.
Given the time and effort that obviously went into the pre-event information that this was not clearly communicated to athletes is, I hope something that organisers will learn from for future events. Things are always easy to manage when they go well, the true test of any organisation is how well they handle things that are not going well and clear communication is the key to that.
Pay to view
By now you may have worked out that I did not pay the €10 fee to join the ICF YouTube channel to watch the championships. Charging to watch the World Championships is, in my view and seems to be the view of many, a huge step backwards. SUP Racing is a tiny sport and to close the door to casual viewers can only reduce the audience at a time when it is important to increase it.
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| Pay to view with YouTube |
It is easy to gauge how big this sport is using YouTube which helpfully presents the viewer numbers for any video. The ICF broadcasts for the Long Distance SUP events are easy to find and here are the viewer numbers
2021 25k views Watch it here
2022 14k views Watch it here
2023 10k views Watch it here
View numbers for the ICF events seem to be in decline, which confuses me. Usually, they have fantastic commentators and provide great coverage but their official channel is not that popular, the most viewed videos from Thailand have attracted only 19 thousand views.
However, those numbers are massive when contrasted to the Women's Long Distance Event from Florida. As I type this the Planet Canoe YouTube channel has the Women’s long distance event available to view for free (here) and it has amassed a total of 1,400 views…
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| Women's Open Long Distance and an idea of my YouTube viewing! |
Charging - A mistake
I am convinced this was a mistake by the ICF and hope that they will not do the same for future events if they want to grow the sport. I understand the need to find funding to broadcast the championship around the world, the costs involved must be huge, but a sport that is so young and immature needs time to grow and find an audience, that audience is not behind a paywall.
And for those thinking “It was only 10 Euros, get over it” I reply with; the live broadcast was in the middle of my night, I was sleeping while racers were racing. I like watching SUP Racing more than most but not enough to stay awake all night. Christmas is one paycheck away, the most expensive time of the year for many and 10 Euros makes a difference at this time of year. For the same fee you can get a month of Netflix (with ads), 1.5 months of Amazon Prime and 2 months (for me) of HBO Max.
Where is the value for money for viewers?
Disqualifications
Thankfully there were few controversial moments through the championships, at least there were very few on my social media! Sadly one dominated for a day or so, the double disqualification in the Women’s Technical Race Open Final.
The video for this race is currently available on YouTube and can be seen here
If you have not seen it then here is a brief summary of what I think happened...
- Mariecarmen Rivera got a fantastic start and was leading the pack into the first turn. She was then hit from behind knocking her from her board, eventually finishing in last place.
- Seychelle hit Mariecarmen.
- Juliette Duhaime seems to collided with Seychelle.
The rest of the pack got in each other's way at the turn with Duna Gordillio showing great maturity in navigating her way through the mess to take the lead and then the win.
Going into the turn Mariecarmen was a board length clear of Seychelle and Juliettee was about 3/4 of a board further back. That is important because the rules are clear and specify a half-board length as the separation required to give the leading paddler the right of way.
Mariecarmen should have been able to make the turn uncontested. Seychelle should have been able to make her turn uncontested. The rest had to sort themselves out.
I commented on this in part 1 of my Olympic series here,
Many will say ‘rubbing is racing’ but I can think of no other sport where shoving a competitor out of the way is permitted or even encouraged. Yet that is what happens in SUP. How could commentators explain that the paddler leading at a turn can be legally pushed out of the way, losing their advantage to finish last?
Yet this is exactly what happened at the ISA World Championships in Denmark in the final of the Elite Women's race, the paddler who got to the turn first finished last after being forced wide by the eventual winner. And they weren't a little bit ahead at the turn, they were a fraction under half a board length ahead, well over 2m.
History Repeating
Sadly it was the same padder who suffered in both events, and as a spectator, my heart goes out to Mariecarmen. She is clearly one of the fastest paddlers in the world yet this season has been unable to translate that speed into results at the pinnacle of the sport.
But she was not the only one to lose out, three paddlers lost out in the most important race of their year because either the rules were not good enough or the course was not good enough or there were too many athletes competing on the course that was available at that location. When the beach start and beach run were removed from the Technical Race the course should have been changed with a much longer run to the first buoy to give some separation to paddlers at that crucial turn.
If you watch the video it is clear that Seychelle slowed to allow Mariecarmen to turn, which backed her up into the pack and Juliette could not avoid her. That chain reaction was enough to cause Mariecarmen’s left foot to slide off the rail ending her race. Although I am guessing that this was why Juliette was disqualified, she seems to have had little contact with anyone.
Was it deliberate? No. Obviously not. It was a consequence of technical racing with the best athletes in the world trying to get into a space 20 inches wide at the turn and as a result three of the top paddlers in the world were missing from the results.
The lack of official communication around this incident makes it very hard for other paddlers, especially those new to the sport, to learn from it. This is an area the sport MUST address.
Men V Women
The lack of communication from the ICF after the disqualifications led to some ridiculous speculation on social media, and that was only on the stuff I see, which is limited. There was quite a lof of comparison with the men, and you can see their race here
Again the first turn is chaotic but there were no disqualifications, ‘The Patriarchy’ was the most ridiculous reason I saw for this, as if the judges went out of their way to punish successful female athletes. Not only is that ridiculous but it is also insulting to the judges who have a hard enough job already.
Breaking down the first turn
At that first turn, no men fell in despite the close-quarter racing, and overlapping of boards. I think that is more about Physics than any difference in skills. The guys are simply heavier than the women and it takes much more force, more leverage to knock them off their feet. Maricecarmen might be half the weight of the guys in that race and it is far harder for her to resist the impact of a competitor's board than it is for a heavier guy.
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| YouTube Screen Grab |
There were no penalties during the men’s race because no rules were broken, of course there was contact but because all the paddlers got there at the same time, roughly one board length behind Manuel they were all within that half-board length. Noic in second place at the buoy has a perfect turn, overlapping Manuel’s Sunova without impeding him while staying upright with a board between his legs! Physics.
The future for Paddle Worldwide?
If you missed this news the ICF will be no more from 2026, rebranding as Paddle Worldwide and relocating its HW to Hungary. One of the aims of the rebranded organisation is
“… secure the long-term growth and success of both paddle sports and the federation.”
Growth and success.