Fun Night Of Stand Up Paddleboard Sprint Racing
It was a fortuitous call from Starboard Team Stand Up Paddleboard Rider Trevor Tunnington (aka the Fastest Paddler in the world) who just happened to be passing through town and wanted to stop by the shop. We took that as an excuse to organize some low pressure sprint racing and it was way more fun than we thought! (Pictured Trevor Tunnington - all photos courtest Ron Steinau)
We had talked about running sprint races on weekday nights as a fun way to be on the water on a weekday evenings but had never got it together to make it happen. Thanks to Tunnington passing through we decided it was great excuse to give it a try and test the locals against the world's best. So with 3 days notice we put up a facebook post and let it roll.
We set the course as a 200m sprint heading from Terrapin Crossroads and finishing right in front of the shop. 8 paddlers showed up to race and it was surprising to see just how close everyone was. We essentially raced one design with the racers taking turns on the 17'6 x 23" Starboard Sprint and the 14' x 28" Starboard All-Star. A few paddlers also gave a try on the SIC X14 Pro-Lite. It was no surprise as Tunnington was the class of the field. What was a surprise is how tight the racing was up and down the field.
We ran the event as a time trial sending paddlers off the line one by one. The last group did receive a bit more wind and tide at their backs but it really didn't seem to show up in the results. The racing was easy to run and as we said earlier a ton of fun. You will definitely be seeing weekday sprint racing popping up on the 101 Surf Sports Event Calendar next year. Thanks to everyone who came and espescially Starboard Stand Up Paddleboarding's Trevor Tunnington. We also had a special guest in Chris Ting (pictured with Tunnington), of VMG Fins in the house. Chris was showing us some of the hottest new SUP racing fins. Come on down to the shop if you want to see the world's fastest stand up paddling fins from Australia's VMG Fins. (Pictured below Trevor Tunnington stand up paddles a Prone Paddleboard!)Results at bottom of this article.
Starboard 17'6 Heats
Trevor Tunnington 1 min
David Wells 1 min 9 sec
Brett Nelson 1 min 12 sec
David Hook 1 min 13 sec
David Hook 1 min 10 sec
Jim Robison 1 min 12 sec
14'
David Hook 1.17
David Wells 1.10
Chris Ting 1.16
Tim Leonidakis 1.17
Greg Ostroff 1.16
David Wells 1.07
Trevor Tunnington 1.03
David Hook 1.20
Brett Nelson 1.19