The SUP year 2025 has come to an end, and it is time to look at the highlights. The SUP World Rankings have just released their final Top 20 list, and it makes for very interesting reading. Overall, the rankings align closely with how we experienced the 2025 season on the water.
Before diving into individual results, let’s first take a look at the big picture.
Participation by Discipline
In Long Distance, a total of 1,317 men made the rankings. On the women’s side, 592 athletes were ranked—almost half of the men’s field.
In Technical Racing, the ratio remains similar, with 534 men compared to 273 women.
The Sprint discipline follows the same pattern, with 211 ranked men and 111 women.
What the Numbers Tell Us
When we compare participation across disciplines, a clear trend emerges:
Long Distance is king. It is by far the most popular race format in competitive SUP.
Less than half of the athletes competing in Long Distance also participate in Technical Racing, and Sprint numbers drop even further. This alone raises some interesting questions.
From a spectator’s perspective, Long Distance is arguably the least exciting discipline. Watching draft trains for 45 minutes or more has never captivated large audiences. And yet, athletes and organizers clearly favor it. Why?
One possible explanation lies in demographics. Is SUP racing simply more popular among older athletes? Short, explosive races with hectic buoy turns may not be the ideal format for the 40- and 50-plus crowd. Technical Racing demands more than endurance—it requires agility, fast reactions, and sharp race craft.
We have observed this trend for years: younger athletes tend to perform better in shorter, more explosive race formats, while endurance-heavy disciplines attract a broader—and often older—field.
The Global Race Landscape
Another striking figure is the total number of SUP races included in the SWR ranking system. In 2025, 152 races worldwide contributed points. That averages out to almost three SUP events per week.
The SWR also published its Top 25 races of the year:
5 events received a 5-Star ranking
4 events were rated 4-Star
4 events earned 3-Star status
The remaining races in the Top 25 were 2-Star events
From an international relevance perspective, it is fair to say that this narrows down to around 10 events that truly matter for athletes competing at the elite level.
The remaining races—while important—are primarily regional in relevance. This highlights just how fragmented the sport still is, or perhaps more accurately, how regionally structured SUP racing remains.
In fact, there are cases where athletes sit side by side in the top rankings yet never raced against each other throughout the entire season. We’ll take a closer look at this phenomenon further down.
One thing that we noticed here at the Stand Up Magazin was the high concentration of high profile SUP Events in the first half of the year. All of the top races, except ISA and ICF have taken place before the beginning of summer. These races were not only concentrated during a period of time they were also all in southern Europe. Spain is taking the lead particularly when it comes to SUP Races and athlete dedication.
Looking at individual athletes things are also kind of interesting. We want to limit ourselves here to the Overall Rankings where all three disciplines ty into one big ranking.
Women Top Athletes
Marie Carmen Rivera is the clear winner of 2025. She participated in 17 SUP Races and was always either first or second that is an incredible track record. The pinacle of her 2025 season was that she won all three Gold Medals at the ICF World Championships in Abu Dhabi. At the ISA she brought home two silver and one gold. No question asked: Marie Carmen had a hell of a year.
In second place came the young runner up from Hungary: Csillag Kogsis competed in 13 races and made podium in almost all of them. Sprint seemed to not have been her thing as the 6. Place at the Spring SUP Race and the 9. Place at the ISA are the tow results that do not stand in line with her other wise impeccable results.
The third place goes to Duna Gordillo. Duna has been a strong contender for many years, in fact her SUP career reaches way back into her childhood when SUP and the EURO TOUR just got started in Spain. Duna competed 16 times this year and made podium every time. She only has one 4th place in Sprint at the Spring SUP Race. She can be very proud of herself for being such a consistent ahtlete over so many years.
One of the outliers this year was Esperanza Barreras, she did not have a great year like she usually does. She competed in 13 Races this year and always made podiums. Unfortunately she missed some bigger races and both of the World Champions Ships. Rumor had it that she had some family things to take care of and therefore missed the ICF and the ISA. We are sure she be back strong in 2026.
Looking at the women Over all Top Rankings we did how ever notice a few things that in our view are some discrepancies. For example: Looking at Juliette DuHaimes 8th place in compare Hanna Kaminskas 7th place. Juliette is an international name with a world title under her belt. Hanna is a regional paddler from Poland. Hanna did very well in all the races she attended. Most of them were in Eastern Europe. Hanna and Juliette never competed in the same races. This is the discrepancy we at the Stand Up Magazin hope to over come some day. The sport so far is very regional and the only unified ranking system we have are the SWR. The next logical step would be to have all top 20 Racers on this list to participate in a string of races through out the year. The further we go down this list the more regional it becomes.
Men Top Athletes
Shuri “Shrimpy” Araki is most definitely THE undisputed worlds best of 2025. He competed in 17 races of wich he won 12 races. Shrimpy came to Europe during the main season and dominated pretty much all of them. Shuri Araki already looks back at many years of SUP Races and entered the stage a prodigy child of SUP now he has become the worlds stronges and most consistent SUP Athlete. We are already looking forward to see him padding in 2026.
In second we have Donato Freens. Donato is another SUP Athlete that has made an impact since he was a Junior. Donato also paddeled in 17 racers in 2025. He had a podium at most of them but unfortunately had some events things did not go his way. The World SUP Festival Costa Blanca was one of them. He did not participate at the ICF and got a 4th place in Abu Dhabi in Sprint. As we know Donato he is a hungry athlete and we are sure he will enter 2026 with full force.
Aaron Sanchez came in third this year. He competed in 15 races. His most notable results were his 1st place in Longdistance at the Triple S Festival in Melilla and then the biggest moment of his career was when he won the ICF SUP World Championships in a legendary Tech. Race winning over Shuri Araki. The rest of the races were a mixed bag of Podiums and top tens.
As we look further down the list, the names are less regional than the women. We recognize all the names the one way or the other from previous years and other big races through out the year. This makes kind of sense since we have twice as many male athletes than women.
Conclusion
The year 2025 was a great SUP year, we had so many great we events we covered. It stared with boot in Düsseldort with an event athletes can only dream of being treated like super stars. We moved in to a great Spring-Early Summer with all the great races in from Italy, to Spain and Austria. Everything was concentrated into the first half of the year, leaving the rest of the season to a more regional calendar. Than at very end of the year all athletes come together one more time in Abu Dhabi and and El Salvador.
What the future will hold or not hold, we have written about it many times. For us here at the Stand Up Magazin it was also a difficult year. We lost many advertisers and the industry is generally not out of the woods yet. We asked our community to help support our work. The Stand Up Magazin exists because of its supporters, commercial and private, if we can’t get the support we need our future might not be as bright.
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