Remember the Lost Mills SUP Race from a few years ago? It was the biggest international SUP Race in a land locked region. The Lake Rocks Festival in Austria as part of the SUP Alps Trophy is on the path to become the new Lost Mills. The price money is big this year, the ICF is sanctioning the race and a record number of people signed up for it.
If you have not signed up for the race and you are not going this year, you will for sure be going next year. The organizers and sponsors are poised to turn this event into a MEGA SUP Event.
We just received the entry list and picked out some names to look for. The biggest match up will be the race between Ludovic Teulade and Donato Freens. Ludovic just stole the #1 spot in the Longdistance SUP World Ranking from Donato just last weekend. He is leading by less than 90 points.
We can’t rule out local paddlers to upset the current world top 10: Normen Weber and Ole Schwarz, both two very strong paddlers from Germany will also be there. Normen is currently world #14 and Ole is #51, they both have very strong back grounds in canoe racing. Will they be able to upset the race for podium at the season start of the SUP Alps Trophy ? Normen has a good chance to make the top 10 this weekend.
Will Kaelan Lockhart (#8) and Bruno Hasulyo (#6) be ready to mix up the field? Kaelan won the ICE Race in Thun ahead of Manuel Lauble who is very motivated to improve is #31 spot in the SUP World Ranking. Bruno made 5th at the SUP World Festival a few weeks ago and wont need too many point to move up.
It is hard to take a pick, but we are sure the SUP World Rankings will get a fair shake this the weekend.
On the ladies side, it is the Swiss Anna Tschirky to look for, she is currently in 2nd in the SUP World Rankings and right behind her is #3 Cecilia Pampinella. They are both very eager to catch up to Esperanza Barreras who is not on the entry list this weekend. Will they be able to take over the #1 spot? Most likely not, Espes’ lead is too big, but they can catch up quite a bit and leave Duna Gordillo behind who is in #4 but missing out on getting important points to keep up with the top 3.
The statistics are set up very well for this race to get a premium race index by the SUP World Ranking:
We are counting over 320 entries between team races, juniors and master class. There are 16 nations competing and as described above quite a few elite athletes that can drive the race index up. This race will be a great opportunity to grab valuable points to move up in the rankings.
The PRO Longdistance Race will start on Saturday at 13:00 (2pm) local time and the Tech. Race will be starting at 11:30 on Sunday morning local time. Both races will be livestreamed, which we will have on the website in a separate post this weekend.
This race weekend shapes up to be the most exciting after the SUP World Festival in Spain.