I am a very happy SUP paddler with not one but two NSP SUP Race boards, a 2026 Carolina Evo that came from NSP as part of their sponsorship of SUP My Race and a pre-owned 2023 Ninja that I swapped for another board.
Paddling these two is fun; they have character, but despite having the same aim - get to the finish line as fast as possible - they are also different, and that prompted me to try to find out more about how these boards came about.
Back in February 2025, I had a chat with Chris Chalmberlain from NSP, and now, I have been very fortunate to get some time with Alain Teurquetil, head of racing design at NSP. The man whose name is on the hull of both of my NSPs.
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| World Champion Sergio Cantoral on his NSP Ninja. Image: NSP |
Alain, thank you so much for taking the time to contribute to my blog, and thank you for the support of NSP for SUP My Race.
Hello Chris, it’s great to talk about these boards with you
At the start of my NSP experience, I would have thought that the Carolina came first, with the Ninja developed later, and I was incorrect! The Ninja predates the Carolina by two seasons, but these were not the first SUP Race boards in the NSP line-up. With NSP being primarily a surf brand, it should not have been a surprise that their first SUP race boards were created for rougher water and … surf.
Actually, the Carolina existed long before the Carolina name was taken. Originally, the board was called Flat Water Recess, and files were initially made in February 2014. So your original thought was correct, the Carolina board came first, but the Carolina name came second.
Of course! I am surprised that a board we now know as a rougher water board was first known as a flat water board, but then that shows how the sport has changed in the last decade.
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| Alain in action in June 2014 on the board that would become the Carolina |
Oh Carolina
If you have paddled for any length of time, you will know that the Carolina is not named after the song but after the classic race, the Carolina CUP, which sadly seems to have dropped off the race calendar recently.
This race had everything, surf zones, flatwater and current to challenge racers and was a true test of skill and endurance with a course of around 18km, not something you find often on the 2026 race circuit.
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| Two generations of NSP Carolina, ready to race. Image: NSP |
The board we now know as the NSP Carolina was launched in 2019, and now I know that this was a development of the original Carolina shape, combined with knowledge gained from the development of the Sonic and Puma boards. The original Carolina was joined in the NSP range in 2025 with the launch of the new Carolina Evo. This Evo is a product of the Ninja and the original Carolina, a mix of the best bits of both boards.
That's right. The Carolina shape has existed for a long time, and I have personally used one since April 2014. That was a 23" wide board. Did you know that Michael Booth used my personal board when he started SUP racing to get a 3rd place at nationals on the Gold Coast. The board was not branded NSP at that time.
Wow, I did not know that the SUP community, even at international level, is small, so that should not surprise me.
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| Alain (centre) on the first version of the board that would become the Carolina |
Ninja!
The NSP Ninja was also born from the success of the Sonic and Puma, two boards that remain in the NSP catalogue. The Ninja first appeared in 2017 as an option for racers on flatter courses, yet still able to hold its own in the sea or rougher waters.
Yes, you are nearly correct. I made the first file for the Ninja on 05/04/2015, some 2 years before the production versions. We like to make sure things are just right before we launch a product.
This is the original prototype in June 2015, with Travis Grant paddling on it, furthest from the camera. Titouan is the paddler in the middle (he was still at Starboard back then, but we were already good friends), and I am nearest the camera on a board that was to become the Carolina.
NSP Career
You joined NSP with the aim of starting a SUP race team. That seems to have gone pretty well so far. What was the first board you designed in your time at NSP?
I like to think it has gone well. The first board was the 12’6 BOP board in March 2011
It seems that success came almost immediately with Travis, and more so when Titouan joined the team at the start of 2016. Was this immediate success a surprise or part of the plan?
It was not really a surprise because when we started to develop the first prototypes with Travis, he was very quickly convinced he had a board advantage compared to what was available at the time. We were doing something different, and the boards we were testing suited his paddling style. Maybe it was not for everyone, but it was working for him.
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| Multiple World Champion Duna Gordillo in action. Image: NSP |
And now in 2026, NSP has several multiple World Champions in the race squad with more victories than I can count. Have you exceeded expectations?
Yes, I never thought it would develop that way.
My original goal was to make a board that Travis could win Molokai on. Then, when that happened, the next goal was to make him a recess board to win Molokai again, and we were the 1st to do that on an unlimited board.
When that was achieved, we honestly could have stopped because it was basically a one-paddler team, and we had achieved our goal. But Titouan had just come on board and was still young, so I carried on developing the boards for him, and then more paddlers joined, like Ty Judson and Duna Gordillo, who was very young, and I got affectively implicated to provide them boards that would allow them to achieve their goals.
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| Christian Andersen with a Carolina Evo |
When you know a paddler since he is young and you see him evolving until he gets his 1st world title, it is very emotional. That’s been the case recently with Christian and Sergio, for example.
They are a fantastic group of paddlers, some of whom I have featured here with Sergio, on a Ninja as the lead image.
It is very interesting to hear about building relationships with your team riders and the growth of the NSP family. It certainly seems that NSP spend a lot of time working with junior racers, helping the SUP stars of tomorrow get their racing careers started.
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| Alain on his own design at the start of the 2010 Paris Crossing |
Back to boards, I think that the Ninja and Carolina may have more victories and podiums at the highest level than any other two-board quiver available today. They seem to suit paddlers from flatwater specialists to those who specialise in the sprints and technical races. Why do your boards perform so well under so many different paddlers in such varied conditions?
This is hard to answer, but I think it has to do with the fact that once we have a base that is efficient, we don’t try to reinvent it every year to please the marketing team. We do a lot of minor changes, refining the design and performance, and only if a change improves the previous version, do we introduce it in the next range.
Otherwise, I don’t mind keeping a model unchanged for several years.
Promising a 10% speed gain from one year model to another year model is just unrealistic, so you need to convince your marketing team to be reasonable and make the boards as comfortable to paddle as possible. For me, this is the key.
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| Three generations of NSP Race SUPs at the 2026 Danish SUP Tour on Bornholm. |
That is good to hear. In my former IT professional life, I was never a fan of the constant 'change is good' mentality I often encountered, preferring evolution over drastic changes.
To satisfy my curiosity, does NSP keep a list of champions? Paddlers who have won at the highest level on NSP boards? It must be a long list!
I guess it is done at the NSP level somewhere, but for me, it’s in my head.
Maybe that is something for the marketing team in 2026/2027!
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| The SUP My Race Carolina Evo. Image: Thomas Varcher |
One thing that surprised me the first time I paddled my Carolina Evo was how deep the dugout is; my feet are below the water level when stationary. Dugouts that deep are now more common, but my reading indicates that this has been a priority of yours from day 1, with your original designs. Was being so far ahead of the curve a problem at first, when other SUP race boards were still flat decks?
Yes, it has been a priority since we went into the recess logic, and yes, it can create some issues, so you have to modify the part of the board that is on the top of the water to minimise the water intake.
To make a flat water board for glassy conditions is easy, but to make a board that won’t be a handicap when conditions worsen needs more thinking.
This is to make sure that any water that gets into the dugout is expelled quickly.
That's right. We even had boards made with valve systems that allowed an even lower stance; it never materialised in the range because that would involve a bit of owner maintenance, but it was really interesting.
Titouan and Ty have been racing with such kind of prototypes for a while, and the year when Laura Quetglas won the GlaGla race, for example, she used such a low stance Ninja 20.
When I talked with Chris Chamberlain, he indicated that some work had been done with valves. It is very interesting to hear that some of that work is tested at the highest level, and even with success, a change may not make it into production.
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| Testing, testing, testing. Nothing goes into production until it is right. |
The Carolina and the Ninja were both launched several years ago; since then, both boards have had revisions over the next 5 years, evolution rather than redesign.
Yes, 2014 and 2015 were the starting bases for the boards, Carolina and Ninja, and since then, it was only evolution
If I can start with the Ninja, when this board was launched, SUP racing was still largely focused on the sea, open water. Flatwater-focused events, like the 11 Cities SUP race, were still growing in popularity for a sport that still looked towards waves for locations, and it was not until 2019 that the first flatwater world championships were held by the ICF in China. What was the driving force behind a design that moved away from what had been an ocean or surf focus of the brand towards flatter (but not flat!) water?
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| Christian on the current Ninja. Image: NSP |
The driving force was always what the competition was bringing.
For Molokai, the course demanded an unlimited board, of course. A true ocean board. But away from courses like Molokai, a true DW board might not work so well. We looked at what Mark Raaphorst was coming up with, since his boards were winning, and instead of copying, we started questioning how we could make it better.
When racing got more oriented towards flatter courses, Mathieu Rauzier came up with the Sprint...and we realised that if we were not giving better tools to our paddlers for flat water races, then it would be very complicated for them...so we came up with something more flat water specific, but always questioning how to make it better in certain aspects. And that was the start of the Ninja line.
I am learning that the Ninja I have is very capable in conditions that surprise me, especially for a board that is narrower than my shoulders! And quick. Even in poor conditions, I am maintaining 9 km/h for 10km easily. I am looking forward to really pushing my limits this summer. This versatility, no doubt, has helped numerous paddlers achieve success in events all around the world. Have you been surprised at how well the Ninja handles everything from long-distance river events (with whitewater) to open sea long distance, or was that always the plan?
Not at all! We have not been surprised because the board that you have has around 10 years of evolution. It is a mature platform.
The first prototype, we have an image in this interview, was terrible at sea but behaves very closely to an actual Ninja on pure flat water. This is why I said before that the goal, once you have a good board base, is to make it more comfortable every version of it, so you can start to use it in different conditions that it was originally made for...without losing its original strong point
And why was it called the Ninja?
We wanted to have a 3 range line with each range starting with 1 of the NSP letters. Ninja Sonic Puma...that came during a meal in Thailand with Danu, Trent, Travis, me, and too many beers.
Now that sounds like a good meeting!
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| Duna on the NSP Carolina. Image: NSP |
The Carolina followed, and this is a board that has been under the feet of many winners at the highest level. With the Ninja being so different to the Sonic and Puma boards, it makes a lot of sense to have a board that fills that gap in your range. Was the decision to create it that simple? Or was the decision driven by something else?
As you now know, from our conversation, the Carolina shape has been my favourite board since 2014 and everyone that was trying my board loved it. Of course, it was not called Carolina back then, but we could sense that big conditions DW races on 14 would not be the future, as not enough paddlers were well prepared for these conditions, plus safety reasons, etc... Not everyone was living in Australia or Hawaii or even Brittany in France.
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| Board #3 in the Carolina Family Tree |
Plus, that arrived at a time when paddling technique at the highest level drastically changed. Instead of downwinding in between bumps, the best paddlers were starting to push through the bumps directly in front of them, and this board, the Carolina shape, was perfectly adapted to that.
The Carolina race back then was the illustration of this DW / Flat water race combination. Travis had won it on that board, then Titouan won it on his 1st big race for NSP... so I decided to call the board Carolina so that people would understand that they could use it on the flat and on the ocean.
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| SUP My Race catching the leaders at the Danish SUP Tour. Image: Danish SUP Tour |
And now, the Carolina Evo. With the massive success that both platforms have had, what prompted you to start on the design of the Carolina Evo?
The Carolina has a very parallel outline all the way to the front. That allows you to lean on the front to put the nose very precisely where you want it on the bump in front of you. That’s its main pro.
But that means a wider front of the board.
It’s an asset in DW and not an issue for powerful paddlers, but the races being less and less DW, some less powerful paddlers were looking for a thinner entry from the front to consume less energy on the flat or upwind.
Initially, I made that after watching Titouan suffer against Noic on an upwind part of a bumpy beach race. I was convinced he was at a disadvantage that day because of the board.
So the following week I made a new model with a different entry line, with Duna in mind as well, because she was often telling me her Carolina was a bit demanding for her if conditions were not DW.
That was the beginning of younger girls evolving quickly, like Claudia Postiglione in Italy (note from me, Claudia is now a multiple world champion at the junior level!) so it was perfect timing and an obvious choice to make a 20.5 Carolina Evo.
And paddlers seem to like it a lot. Now we are making a full range of Evo in every kind of width.
I am glad you decided to make it in a wider width; my 23.5” worked perfectly at the Danish SUP Tour on Bornholm, helping me catch the leading three paddlers on the upwind leg. The design really works well.
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| NSP Carolina Evo in Alain's preferred colour scheme |
Famously, change at NSP is driven by performance, not marketing, and this is reflected in the paint schemes you use; you stick with the same team style for several seasons. Which of the NSP schemes is your favourite? The first generation with neon highlights, the more subdued, darker green noses of the next generation or the pastel shades of the current versions of SUP race boards?
I like the last generation of lighter blue. I always fought for lighter colours on my boards
I must confess to liking the first generation with the bold colour scheme; there was one at The SUP Tour, and it still looks great.
Chris C has already answered these questions, and I think it would be great to hear a different voice from NSP. So, Alain
Do you have a favourite race or touring SUP from the range?
If racing.. the Carolina because it is very comfortable DW and super easy to draft someone on flat water...and I never lead groups anymore on flat water....
Not Racing...12’6 Omni and surf fat waves
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| Titouan Puyo on an NSP Carolina |
What is the highlight of your involvement with your team riders?
It’s the personal relationship established with some paddlers like Travis Titouan or Ty who become like part of your family, and to watch them grow through their life.
Even Duna, who is not geographically close. I met her first when she was 12, maybe, to watch her become world champion, go through university and become an adult is incredibly rewarding.
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| NSP at the Gla Gla Race. Image: NSP |
Let’s imagine that you could go to one SUP race, anywhere in the world, every year, which one and why?
It’s the glagla race in January in France if they can do it again. To have that many paddlers on the starting line, with people coming from everywhere for that event, is mind-boggling
I hope it will happen again
I hope so too, that is a race I would love to go to.
And, finally. This is for the winter paddlers on SUP My Race, have you ever paddled in a drysuit
Yes, I did, one year at the glagla race actually.
Alain, thank you so much for taking the time to talk to me and for the fascinating insights into NSP.
I really like my two NSP Race SUPs and enjoy paddling them here in Sweden. You can follow my progress on them through this blog or on SUP My Race.
NSP are one of the leading SUP and Surf brands and are active all around the world. You can find out more about their SUP Range on the NSP website https://www.nspsurfboards.com and on their Facebook and Instagram pages. They have recently launched a dedicated SUP Race Instagram account - NSP Racing.