ICF Worlds viewed from home

My impressions on the most anticipated race of the season

By Paolo Marconi

For several years now, the ICF World Championships have been the most attended and competitive event of the SUP RACE season. The format proposed by the ICF, being an open world championship with various age categories, allows professional and amateur athletes from all over the world to come together and compete in this event.
This year, the event was held in Sarasota, Florida, at the artificial basin of Nathan Benderson Park, with over 500 athletes from more than 50 nations joining to participate in this great SUP celebration.
For the first time since the inception of the ICF World Championships (my first experience was in China in 2019, and I've participated in every edition since), I found myself watching the race from home, giving me the opportunity to analyze the event from a detached, non-involved perspective.
The race this year took place in an artificial basin, so everyone expected a super flat competition on paper, although the wind conditions caused some ripples on the water and a few unexpected challenges.
A novelty in this edition was the new sprint distance, which was reduced from the usual 200 meters to 100 meters. The official reason for this change was not announced, but one can assume it was a decision made to streamline the heats given the large number of participants.
Apart from this change in distance, the disciplines were the classic ones: Technical Race, Long Distance, Sprint, and Inflatable.

Being a fan of exciting races, a “fetishist” of technical skills, a “romantic” of heroic SUP, and a supporter of extreme races with tough conditions, I started watching this "flat" world championship with a bit of a nose in the air, not expecting much. Fortunately, however, the talent of the top riders and some race incidents made what would have otherwise been a “flat” world championship truly exciting in every sense.
Here’s a brief analysis of the main disciplines of this world championship as seen from home.

SPRINT
Those who know me know that I’m not a fan of straight-line sprints. Sprints with a buoy turn and maybe a beach start are fun, but paddling straight out at maximum power is not what excites me the most in our sport.
However, the format proposed by the ICF this year made me change my mind. The reduction of the distance to 100 meters made the races, from the very first rounds, highly competitive. We saw razor-thin duels and big names eliminated in the early stages by less than a second. This type of race levels the playing field; you don’t need oceanic skills or years of experience, just (so to speak) excellent sprinter training to achieve good results. This feature also favored athletes new to the international scene, maybe coming from the canoeing world, who transferred their canoeing know-how to stand-up paddling.
In conclusion, I believe this new distance was a step forward for our sport, making straight-line sprints exciting and dynamic, and finding the right distance to cover in SUP in this type of event.

TECH RACE
The original Tech Race course featured a beach start and a land passage before the last buoy, but due to the beach layout, it was changed, sparking some controversy among athletes who had spent months training specifically for that course. The revised course included a seated start, six buoy turns, no land passage, and a finish line directly in the water.
The greatest difficulty, especially on the first day, was a strong crosswind that pushed athletes into the buoys. Otherwise, the races were fairly flat, at least until the semifinals, when the level of competition rose and the show began.
The real excitement began in the finals, where the level of racing was truly stellar. The course layout meant that the first athlete to turn the first buoy had a high probability of podium placement, but this also led to duels and incidents in the early stages of the race.
In the women’s final, there was a tense moment at the first buoy, which affected the race with falls and contact between competitors, resulting in penalties for some. The only athlete to avoid the chaos at the buoy was the one who eventually won the race.
The men’s race, on the other hand, turned into a three-way battle from the middle of the race onward, with the winner pulling off an outside overtaking move at the last buoy that had SUP RACE fans on the edge of their seats.
In conclusion, while this Tech Race wasn’t inherently thrilling given the course and flat conditions, fortunately, the athletes were able to deliver an exciting show thanks to their skills and experience at the highest levels of competition.

LONG DISTANCE
The Long Distance event consisted of two 5.5-kilometer laps around the perimeter of Nathan Benderson Park. We could have already predicted what kind of race it would be when the ICF announced the location a year ago. A course like this guarantees a strong start to contest the top positions, a relatively slow middle phase, and a highly charged final phase for the podium positions. And that’s exactly what happened, except for a few exceptions and incidents that made the race more interesting.
In the women’s race, a lead group formed and stayed intact until the last kilometer. In the men’s race, the lead pack was large, with more than ten athletes paddling side by side, with some bursts of speed to test the athletes' condition. The men’s race concluded with a decisive 500-meter sprint by the winner, who managed to come back after a fall at the start and clinch the victory (just like the third-place finisher).
The Long Distance race was probably the least exciting of the three, but once again, thanks to the athletic and technical level of the participants, it still provided excitement, especially in the final stage of the race.

This is just my perspective on the event as seen from home. Usually, when I’m directly involved in a race, the emotions are much stronger, and they don’t allow for the kind of detached analysis I’ve provided here. Certainly, if I had been there in person, my view of the event would have been different—perhaps better, perhaps worse.
The next ICF World Championships will be in Abu Dhabi in November 2025, and it will surely be another opportunity for growth and expansion for SUP RACE.