ICF SUP World Championships 2021: Day 2 of the World Championships in Hungary

(Text & images by Anja Burger & team)

An 18.5 kilometre course, a 10 kilometre course, sprints and then – even more sprints! I am sure that if support was a discipline, South Africa would certainly take gold with our team screaming their lungs out from the sidelines, echoed by our friends and family on social media.

We started day two with the long distance races. Gareth, Sinda, Robert and Evette smashed the 18.5 km; while Guy, Gary, Elmari and Chiara took on the 10 km.
A top 30 spot for Gareth and a top 20 for Gary, while both Elmari and Evette made 8th in their category, with Chiara placing 10^th in the junior women’s inflatable race.

Click below to see the distance race image gallery for the men and the women:

The long distance races were followed by some nail-biting sprints for Guy, Gary, Robert, Elmari, Evette and Chiara.

Unfortunately Guy and Robert only partook in their first heat, but what a great experience they have had in their first ever World Championship Sprints – achieving personal bests.

Gary – the legend, placed second in his first heat, second in his quarter finals and led the way in most of his semi final!  Unfortunately his competitors caught up with him at the finishing line, where the top 7 all placed within a second of each other – with Gary at 7^th position. He will be fighting it out in Final B on Saturday for the Worlds ranking.

Elmari – in her riveting green tights and pink lips – had us on tenterhooks as she was a very strong competitor in her first heat. She placed second in heat 1, taking her straight through to the finals on Saturday. She will be fighting it out at 10:04.

Despite being nudged and pushed out of her lane by another paddler, Evette competed with great grit and speed in her first heat. She placed 5^th, taking her through to the semi finals. Evette showed the same grit and strength in her semi finals but just could not get into that top 4. With a time of 1:19.99 she placed 7^th.

Chiara – our 2021 junior paddler – had tough competition from the get go. Despite this, she held great speed, pace and strength from her first stroke to her last, placing 4^th in her first heat and into the semi finals. Unfortunately she did not make the top 4 in her semi finals, but showed a consistent speed and pace, placing 7^th.

Sinda put up his best efforts when he raced against some of the world’s best in his semi-final, and despite an incredible time of 1:02:39, did not make it to the next round. The open men’s section set some unbelievable times (48 seconds for a sprint!) and new records, relentlessly raising the bar for this already high-powered category.

Day two was incredible and we are sooo ready for day three.

The Sprint finals take place on Saturday morning: Gary at 9am, Elmari at 10 and Chelsea at 11. The inflatable race will follow with Chelsea and Anja doing a 7km course. The technical races will then take place from 14:30-19:20 with Guy, Gary, Rob, Elmari, Evette and Chiara fighting it out.

ICF SUP World Championships 2021: Day 1 of the World Championships in Hungary 

(text by Anja Burger, images by team)

What a day it has been! Our open athletes woke up this morning, knowing that there would be serious game time today. A gruelling 1000m course was set for the technical race – with 7 turns, a full-on sprint pace and an extra 200m sprint or two, as if the race pace was not enough!

Chelsea started with the technical course, and pushed herself into the next round by securing the 5^th position in her first heat. She ended the technical quarter finals with a 7^th position, fighting it out against some of the top female paddlers. In the open men’s race, both our guys competed in the first heat – a gruelling one – where only the first 4 paddlers get selected to compete in the quarter final.

The technical races were followed by sprints for the open men and women. Chelsea took off  in the second heat, placing herself magnificently in 4^th position, causing the team to jump up and down in absolute bliss. She had her quarter final sprint at 16:00, where she paddled an incredible 1:11.42, landing her in 5^th position. Unfortunately only the top 4 make it to the semi-finals but she will still be competing in Final C on Saturday.

Gareth had a gruelling sprint against incredibly strong paddlers. Even with a show-stopping time, he did not qualify for the next round. Well done, Gareth! A time of 1:06.34 should’ve gotten you into that next round!

Sinda had us on the edge of our seats! He started his first heat with power and speed, then to our great distress fell in the water after just 50m. We have never seen anyone get back on his board so quickly, then he went on from last to 3^rd position – securing his place in the quarter final! This race was against the well-known Hungarian paddler, Bruno Hasulyo; the Greek Phaedon Doukas and a Russian paddler, Dmirty Petrov. Sinda paddled his heart out to secure himself in 4^th position. He will be sprinting it out again in the semi finals on Friday, 10 September at 17:20.

The races were followed with an opening ceremony held by the Host’s Organising Committee, with the flags of 31 countries being waved and celebrated. There are 500 participants representing these countries on 5 continents – an amazing feat after the impact of lockdown on the sport in the last 2 years. 

As from tomorrow, the races will be televised on Planet Canoe’s Youtube station: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uvSjQnnetuc

Tomorrow, our athletes Gareth, Sinda, Robert, Evette, Gary, Guy, Elmari and Chiara will take off on their long distance courses in the morning. This will be followed by the sprint heats and quarter finals for Guy, Gary, Robert, Elmari, Evette and Chiara as well as Sinda’s semi final for sprints in the afternoon.

Our athletes are so grateful for the incredible support they have been receiving from the members of the whatsapp group. Please keep it going strong!

ICF SUP World Championships 2021: The last day before the start of the World Championships in Hungary

Boards measured, water packs are cold and feet up.

Our athletes spent the day preparing the last details before the start of tomorrow’s races. We could, however, not start the day without handing over Gareth’s blazer, as he could not make the handover in Muizenberg. With a big smile, proud photo – we are ready to take this on as the SA SUP National Team. We then visited the board scrutineer team who measured the boards, and made sure that all the correct stickers were where they should be.

With a paddle and last test of the boards and the water – our athletes are ready to take on the ICF World SUP Championships for 2021!

Chelsea, Gareth and Sinda will compete in the Open Category with the Technical Heats on Thursday morning and the Sprint Heats on Thursday afternoon. The race organisers hosted a Day 1 briefing on zoom where they discussed the last details of the technical and sprint course. Find more information here: https://balaton2021.com 

ICF SUP World Championships 2021: Tuesday, two days until Worlds 

The team is accredited and the boards are booked in for the World Championships.

The event is creeping closer and closer and the streets and water are definitely filling up with paddlers from around the world. A hand shake with Michael Booth, short chat with Connor Baxter, the Grecian and Austrian paddlers cruising alongside our masters women and the juniors testing out their inflatables – it is all becoming real. 

We have received all our boards – a massive thank you to Jorg from the Netherlands who is renting boards to us and transported the boards to Hungary, as well as Chris Taucher, who transported the Fanatic boards to us from Austria. Thank you!! Gareth also arrived today and we are ecstatic to be a full team. 

The team has arrived!

All 10 of them are safely in Balatonfüred, Hungary and getting used to the water, temperature, boards and the reality that World Championships is just around the corner! 

Upon arrival in Hungary the team was introduced to the biggest lake in Europe with pristine blue waters, swans bathing on the water’s edge and a language that nobody understands except the Hungarians themselves.

The Austrian paddler, Chris Taucher dropped off two Fanatic boards at our little house, and naturally we had to try them out straight away. We were met with swans, fishermen and tourists checking us out. 

A hurried dinner was sourced from a local restaurant. We really did not know what we were getting from the very Hungarian menu until we had our plates in front of us.  Thankfully we have been fed and hydrated with reasonable prices – very similar to those in South Africa. 

We got some training done nice and early on Monday morning. Paddling and running familiarised us with the water’s edge and cobbled streets. The wind created much excitement for these South Africans, as the entire team originates from Cape Town.

The hard work has been done – we are now getting both our headspace and bodies ready for racing. 

The Open athletes are starting us off with Technical and Sprint heats on Thursday.

Make sure you keep an eye out for the live broadcasting on Planet Canoe’s youtube channel.

Find it here: https://www.youtube.com/c/PlanetCanoe/videos?view=2&sort=dd&live_view=502&shelf_id=0

The first day will unfortunately not be televised, so please catch some live feeds on the SA SUP Team instagram page: https://www.instagram.com/sasupteam/

More will be shared on the SUPSA website as well as SUPSA’s Facebook and Instagram page.

You can also join the WhatsApp group for supporters, https://chat.whatsapp.com/C5lS6pnUHzj32xBImzrb2h 

The events schedule and results can be found here: 

https://icfsupworlds2021.spotfokus.com/index.php?gmt=2&gmt2=-120