Will the ICF SUP World Championships see a battle of the nations? Well maybe not as much as with the ISA, since the concept is quite different. At the ISA the number of participants is caped and athletes are qualifying via national championships and therefore arrive as official teams. Since the ICF is is open to as many paddlers as possible we are looking at something like 500 paddlers finding their way to Sarasota in a few weeks. Who are these paddlers and where are they from? What is their age, with an open event like this one, we are able to gather such data in advance and analyze it.
You might be interested in this data because you like to know your competition or you are in the SUP Business and like to know more about the demographics of active SUP Athletes. We at the Stand Up Magazin like both, we like to see who the competitors are and have written an entire article about that. Now we are looking at who the countries are with the most paddlers and what is their age distribution is.
We counted 46 countries being represented in Sarasota, this number might not be 100% correct as some people did not put their nations in correctly or failed todo so all together. Lets have a closer look at these numbers.
USA – Most paddlers
Despite the somewhat disappointing participation numbers from US paddlers they are still the nation with the most athletes. There are 87 paddlers registered with an average age of 46. Some of the stand out names from the USA are people like Syechelle Webster, Kimberly Barns, Stephanie Shiedeler, Soryn Preston, Bodie von Allmen and Dave Boehne. Dave might not be a stand out athlete but he is a stand out SUP Pioneer from Dana Point with his brand “Infinity SUP”. Notably Danny Ching and April Zilg are missing. Candice Appleby is mission for obvious reasons.
Poland – The youngest nation
Poland arrives in Sarasota with 7 athletes. The youngest is 11 years old the oldest is 55. Four out of seven will be in the Junior Division.
Austria – The oldest nation
There are 3 Austrian SUP Enthusiasts finding their way to Sarasota, two of them are over 50 and Christian Taucher is in his 40ies. Christian is a better known name in Europe and recently participated in SUP races across Asia where he made podium.
In both cases Poland and Austria, the picture might be a big skewed since they are very small teams.
Greece – Big Team and very young
Greece is showing up with 31 paddlers with an average age of 25. These numbers are very impressive for many reasons. First: Traveling from Greece to Florida is far, so it is great to see how many people are making their way across the Atlantic. Second: Judging by the amount of young athletes SUP must be very popular amongst young people in Greece. 17 participants are under 20 years old with the youngest being 12. We may conclude that SUP as a sport is doing very well in Greece.
Spain – Combo of large team and young age
45 people will represent Spain in Sarasota with an average age of 31, that is considerable young. Spain has most likely also the most people who are in contingency for a world title. The list is very long and we have all the big names from Spain present. We might see a clean sweep of all podiums by the Spanish particularly the women. 18 Athletes are under 20, that is almost half of the team and 6 of them are in their lower 20ties. We might say with confidence that Spains’ women will be the strongest athletes at the ICF SUP World Championships.
France – Smaller than anticipated
France is usually a big force to be reckoned with and remains to be that. They are arriving with only 19 athletes at an average age of 33. For a smaller team like that they do have a high density of known paddlers. Such as, the Garioud brothers, Iona Rivet, Ludovic Teulade or Simon Ackermann the 18 year old who just won the French national title. However there are some significant names missing such as Melanie La Fenetre and with the retirement of Titou Puyo France has lost the greatest French paddler there was.
Canada – Big Team – high ages
Demographically Canada falls into the same category as the US. With 41 paddlers they are one of the larger teams but with an average age of 46 also one of the oldest. We found 2 juniors in the list, 17 are in their 50ties and 3 in their 60ties. The only familiar name we could find is Maddie Leblanc, she is making podium at every race she participates in her region.
Italy – A younger team
Italy is showing up with 15 athletes, and all their best paddlers are part of it. The average age of the team is 27 and two of their strongest paddlers are still in junior age: Cecilia Pampinella and Claudia Postiglione. We are how ever missing the Nika brothers who are often part of international races and events.
Japan – A young team
Japan is represented by 21 paddlers with an average age of 27. The two Japanese standouts are Shuri “Shrimpy” Araki and Rai Taguchi. Half of the team are juniors. This speaks volumes for the sport in Japan. If anyone can get multiple gold then it is Shrimpy, how ever we did not see him signed up for sprints so far.
Brazil – A small team
In Brazil Surfing is now the 2nd largest sport after Fussball. We might expect that people would also convert over to SUP sports. Looking at the size of the team this seems not to be the case quite yet. With 11 athtletes Brazil is one of the smaller teams and with an average age of 36 also one of the middle aged ones. One name is standing out however: Eri Tenorio. Eri has a pretty strong track record this year with results at the ISA and the EURO TOUR.
UK – Middle aged team
The UK is represented by 19 paddlers at an average age of 39 years old. Their most prominent athlete is Blue Ewer who appears to be the only better known name from the UK representing the open class. The next name in the UK that comes to mind is Holly Pye but her name is missing on the roster.
Germany – Younger than expected
Germany is represented by 12 paddlers and with an average age of 30 that is telling us that there is a good amount of juniors. There are 5 of them which is half of the team. With Peter Weidert Germany has also the undisputed 50+ world champions and we know he has been doing lots of work bringing up a younger generation in his country.
Australia – Michael Booth
Its like Booty is the last of its kind in Australia, everybody in this once great SUP nation has moved on from SUP. Boothy and his 3 team mates are at a combined age of 47.
There are far more countries on the list that we can go through one by one. Some countries are represented by only one person, for example Bulgaria which will be represented by Andrey Kraitor, who might just bring a medal home. There is Colombia, New Zealand, Marocco, Kazakhstan, Lithuania and even the Ukraine. Denmark has 2 paddlers and of course its most famous paddler after Casper Steinfath, Christian Andersen.
We are looking forward to see all these nations compete very soon.
**The data this article is based on was sent to us October 23rd which is not the deadline for the sign up. So one or the other team might not be complete at this time the article was written.