The Lake Rocks by the Numbers

It’s rare to see a SUP race with the scale and energy of The Lake Rocks in Austria. In terms of mass participation, the only comparable event is the ICF SUP World Championships. None of the SUP races in Spain have come close to matching the numbers achieved by the SUP Alps Trophy. Events like this not only bring the community together—they also offer a valuable opportunity to gather demographic data.

Can we extract meaningful demographic data from such events?

Who is paddling? Where are they from? How old are they? Answering these questions helps us better understand the current landscape of SUP. Based on the 231 finishers of the Long Distance Race on Lake Faak, we ran some numbers to see what patterns might emerge.

Before diving into the general demographics, one thing stood out: the underrepresentation of elite paddlers. Despite offering one of the most generous prize purses of the season, the turnout among top-tier athletes was surprisingly low.

On the women’s side, only Esperanza Barreras and Csillag Kocsis showed up to compete—making for a relatively easy payday. Notably absent were the Spanish elite women. Marie Carmen Rivera, who dominated the 2024 season, was a no-show. Cecilia Pampinella was also missing, along with many others who had been active on the EURO TOUR. Even Juliette Du Haime, one of the most active paddlers in 2024, hasn’t appeared at a single European race this season.

The same trend was seen among the men. One might have expected Shuri “Shrimpy” Araki to make the trip to Austria for another €2,000 prize, but he didn’t. Nor did Arthur Arutkin or Antonio Morillo, both of whom performed well in Barcelona. In fact, not a single French name appeared on the results list. Other notable absentees included Christian Andersen and Blue Ewer, the list could go on.

It’s puzzling why so many elite athletes passed up the chance to compete for significant prize money and connect with fans and fellow paddlers from around the world. On the bright side, Normen Weber and Kyriaki Logotheti made the most of the opportunity—and walked away with well-earned wins and prize money.

Participation by countries

Perhaps the limited presence of elite paddlers can be attributed to the geographical location of Lake Faak. Nestled in a valley in the southeastern Alps near the borders of Italy and Hungary, the lake is not the easiest place to reach—especially by car, as it requires traversing the entire alps. The graphic below illustrates this point quite clearly.

Hungary and Italy made up the bulk of the participants. Both countries are known for their strong youth development programs and, importantly, are in close proximity to the event site. Unsurprisingly, they showed up in large numbers. We also saw solid participation from Germany.

In contrast, despite their strength in SUP, Spain and France were notably absent. Greece was also significantly underrepresented. These countries had a strong presence at the ICF World Championships, but for likely geographical and financial reasons, they were missing from the lineup in Austria this weekend.

When it comes to female participation, the sport still has room to grow—as the chart below suggests.

Female representation remains relatively low, as indicated by the color distribution in the chart. Hungary stands out as a leader in this area, not only bringing the most paddlers overall but also having the highest proportion of female participants. Italy also showed strong representation in the women’s division.

Generational Gap?

The topic of age divisions always sparks a lot of discussion. At Lake Faak, the Masters 40+ category was the most dominant, closely followed by the Masters 50+. To be fair, this chart only reflects the 12K Long Distance Race—there was also a shorter FUN Race for kids and adults who weren’t quite up for the full 12 kilometers.

It’s great to see a solid number of U16 Juniors taking on the “big” race, and the Open category had almost as many participants as the Masters divisions.

So while this chart might not fully capture the younger generation—since many likely opted for the shorter race—it does highlight how strong the 40+ crowd is in terms of participation.

Now, even though juniors might be underrepresented in the chart above, the one below gives us a better idea of which countries brought the most juniors. And once again, it’s worth noting that Spain and Greece are completely missing from this data.

This chart confirms something we already suspected: Italy is doing a great job promoting youth participation in SUP. Hungary brought the most paddlers overall, so it’s a bit surprising that more juniors didn’t show up in their group. On a positive note, even though the Netherlands didn’t send a large team, a good portion of their paddlers were juniors—which is awesome to see.

Conclusion

We have to acknowledge that this data isn’t fully representative of the global SUP community. Instead, this is more of a snapshot of the paddlers who made their way to Austria to take part in the largest SUP festival of 2025.

What we can take away from this chart, however, is that not everyone is willing to travel, no matter how big the event or how much prize money is on the line. This becomes especially clear when looking at the Hungarian participants—they showed up in large numbers for Lake Faak, but don’t typically travel to the big events in Spain. Or the Spanish didn’t make the trip to Austria. The same seems to apply to the Greek paddlers. Despite Agios Nikolaos being a major event there were not that many out of the country athletes in Greece and we saw very few Greek athletes in Austria or Spain.

Now in its fourth edition, the Lake Rocks Festival by the SUP Alps Trophy became the biggest event of the year—not just in terms of participation, but also in variety. It featured elite races, SUPsquatch races, Fun Races, and even a River City Race. With a total prize purse of €12,000, it was one of the most lucrative events of the season. Still, not everyone felt it was worth the trip, even though the timing aligned well with other major races.

It seems that event size and prize money alone aren’t enough to attract the entire SUP world. Maybe athletes are more willing to fly halfway around the globe for a race with no prize money—if it means they can claim to have participated in a World Championship.

For the Race Nerds

At Stand Up Magazin, we’ve just started exploring what AI can do with data analytics—and we’re finding it pretty exciting. One of the charts we created shows a timeline of finishers, where each “X” marks a paddler and how long after the winner they crossed the finish line. It’s a great way to visualize the density of the field.

For example, in the women’s race, the chart clearly shows the dominance of Esperanza Barreras and Csillag Kocsis over the rest of the pack.

The mens chart paints a bit of a different picture, first there are way more Xs and and the front half look strong. Most athletes finished within the 20 minute mark behind the winner. Even the first 10 minutes behind the winner were very busy with finish line crossings.