"We are surfers". The best French Stand Up Paddle (SUP) boast "surfing culture" while international canoeing authorities want to govern this trendy discipline and candidate for the Paris Olympics 2024. The SUP, classic or race (race), is it surfing or a paddle sport? For the supers, the practitioners of the SUP, whose championships of France ended Sunday in Lacanau, the question does not arise.
According to them, the inventor is Laird Hamilton, the Hawaiian legend, surfer of big waves. For kayakers on the other hand, SUP is more prosaically a derivative of the paddle canoe.
The Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) is expected to decide soon. At stake, the image that the International Canoeing Federation wants to bond with this field discipline: coastline, rivers, rivers ...
"Canoeing wants to appropriate an image, that of a young sport"
"Canoeing wants to appropriate an image, that of a young sport" , deplores the president of the Surf Federation (FFS) Jean-Luc Arassus, also recognizing "an Olympic interest" , with the Olympic Games as a backdrop Paris. "For a long time, we thought that the SUP, easier to organize, would become Olympic before surfing," recalls Francis Distinguin, former president of the European Surf Federation. But it's surfing that will be in Tokyo in 2020 and Los Angeles in 2028.
In recent years, the SUP knows "a huge craze, failing to bring back licensees," says Serge Lougarot, national technical adviser to SUP at the FFS. There are about forty dedicated clubs, some pros (10 stages around the world). But, there is "no precise figure of supers because they are also surfer" .
The report is there: the SUP is present everywhere, even on the Seine in Paris. The activities of SUP have become real tourist arguments. As the surf on which the cities are fighting for the Paris Games (Lacanau against Hossegor-Capbreton-Seignosse-Biarritz).
"The SUP is part of our heritage," continues Mr. Arassus, noting that the FFS (18,000 federal licenses and 60,000 leisure licenses) has invested heavily in the SUP that extends its territory.
Adicionei um vídeo a uma playlist @YouTube https://t.co/h5cPY5Rz3C Takeo Stand Up Paddle Puerto Escondido Oaxaca
- Alexandre Takeo (@takeosurf) October 27, 2018Lost soul
For her, it's about not being robbed a third time. In 1986, windsurf, one of his emanations, was sailed. In 1990, skateboarding, which she managed, had been married to rollerblading.
"Windsurfing has lost its soul, changed its mind and even its name. It has become windsurfing , " remembers Mr. Distinguin, first DTN surfing, currently responsible for high-level Font-Romeu. Before leaving for the world championships in China (23 November-2 December), caught in this picrocholine war, the members of the French team of SUP Race do not hide their preference. Titouan Puyot (N.3 world), Martin Vitry (European champion) or Mélanie Lafenêtre want to stay "surf" .
In their eyes, the FFS offers them the "best conditions" in terms of medical staff, support ... They are also worried about a canoe-kayak that already has many other Olympic disciplines to support ... " I practice the Va'a (Polynesian canoe) which depends on canoeing and it does not do much, " notes Puyot. "We do not know what he can offer us , " adds Vitry, a SUP professional.
Finally, there is the spirit. All claim it. "I'm surfing," says Mélanie Lafenêtre. "SUP is the world of Hawaiian surfers , " says Arassus. "The" superiors "are attached to the spirit of freedom," adds Michel Plateau, the current DTN.
Finally, the only opposition between "super" and surfing authorities could turn around the 200 m line, created to facilitate entry to the Olympics. For several superiors, the similarity with a race of canoe-kayak but "in less rapid" is a heresy. "We shot ourselves in the foot," Puyot fears.
For Vitry, it would have been better to promote the "beach race" (race with surf and on the shore) "more visual and spectacular" . "People want show, emotions," Puyot insists.