ECA European SUP Championships Longdistance

The last few days we been following the ECA, that is the European Canoe Association holding their first attempt of a SUP Championships. We were watching along on the live stream and the production was very good just like we remember from past ICF events. Unfortunately the turn out was not very great and we wonder why so many top athletes did not choose to travel to Hungary. Maybe it was the lack of price money and expensive travel cost? The last big SUP event in Hungary was the ICF worlds with a great turn out and a perfect organization. We wonder what happened this time?

This long distance race also looked a bit different than what we are used to. We may guess that due to the venue the organizers were forced to put 180 degrees buoy turns into a rather short 9km course, but we do all know such buoy turns do not belong into a long distance race. Looking at the SWR 2-Star rating these Championships did not get rated better than your average local event.

How ever this is not the athletes fault who did travel to Hungary and lets not take away from their accomplishment. There was some good SUP Racing amongst the athletes who did find their way to Hungary. Lets look at the results.

Longdistance Results Men

Looking at the podium we had one of Spains top athlete, Manuel Hoyuela winning gold by 10 seconds over Germanys longtime and top SUP athlete Ole Schwarz. In third place and 18 seconds behind Manuel was another well known name Christian Andersen. After the 4th place with Phaedon Doukas the gap grows rather large to over one minute with Bastian Grimm arriving in 5th position.

Longdistance Results Women

The women longdistance podium was a tight affair with Natalia Novitskaia having the upper hand over Reka Slekta by 3 seconds. The third place wen to the rather unknown Kyriaki Logotheti from Greece. A bit of a surprise might be Claudia Postiglione who had many great podiums this year against a much harder competition.