Kona, HI. – Hall of fame triath­letes Heather Fuhr and Paula Newby-Fraser will be hit­ting the water for the Ford Iron­man World Cham­pi­onships once again. Only instead of don­ning their swim caps and gog­gles, they’ll be stand­ing atop two Surftech 12’1” Laird stand up pad­dle­boards to lead the swim leg of the 2008 race.

Paula Newby-Fraser, win­ner of 8 Iron­man World Cham­pi­onships, spent much of the 2008 Iron­man World Cham­pi­onship qual­i­fy­ing sea­son on Surftech stand up pad­dle­boards lead­ing races in Ari­zona, Couer d’Alene, Idaho and Lake Placid, NY. Pro­vid­ing visual guides to the swim­mers, this vis­i­bil­ity has helped build aware­ness of the cross train­ing value of stand up pad­dling to the triath­lete com­mu­nity. “We’ve been hav­ing a blast on the Surftech boards this sea­son,” com­ments Paula. “We’re incor­po­rat­ing them into our train­ing pro­grams as well as lead­ing the Iron­man races on them”.

Join­ing Paula in lead­ing the race is Heather Fuhr, a fel­low for­mer Iron­man World Cham­pion. The race, con­sid­ered the pin­na­cle event for Iron­man ath­letes, caps off the inau­gural intro­duc­tion of the sport of stand up pad­dling to the triath­lete com­mu­nity. Iron­i­cally, the first major intro­duc­tion occurred at last year’s IM World Cham­pi­onships when pio­neer­ing water­men Laird Hamil­ton and Dave Kalama led the same race. 2008 has clearly pro­gressed from the ini­tial buzz, cul­mi­nat­ing in this Saturday’s race where Iron­man Hall-of-Famers Paula and Heather will lead the same iconic event, show­cas­ing how well embraced stand up pad­dling has become in the world of triathlon. “I’ve been pad­dling a bunch before and after most of the races this year,” com­ments Heather. “So it’s going to be great to get out in the water with all of the com­peti­tors and lead the swim leg for the first time”.

For more info con­tact:
Duke Brouwer, Surftech Events & Pro­mo­tions duke@surftech.com

Team “Love”, the three mem­ber SUP team of Leah Daw­son, Bianca Valenti and Geodee Clark swept the com­pe­ti­tion in Surftech’s inau­gural Women’s SUP Chal­lenge held in con­junc­tion with the ROXY Jam Cardiff. The relay style event fea­tured a unique for­mat that awarded team points based both on pad­dling speed as well as surf skills. Each team mem­ber was required to charge the shore­break and pad­dle around an off­shore buoy before rid­ing a wave and pass­ing the board and pad­dle to their fel­low team mem­ber. “The Stand up event was unlike any­thing else I have expe­ri­enced”, com­mented pro surfer and Love team mem­ber Leah Daw­son. “I hope we can have some­thing like this at every event. It was super fun and show­cased how great stand up pad­dling is as a cross train­ing for surf­ing.“
While the ini­tial rounds required a quick learn­ing curve from the com­peti­tors, the finals fea­tured some seri­ous com­pe­ti­tion as the teams strate­gized about their line­ups, the con­di­tions and the dif­fer­ent Surftech SUP mod­els to choose from. Many top long­board­ers from the ROXY Jam took part in the chal­lenge includ­ing the above Team Love mem­bers as well as notable ath­letes Jen Smith, Kas­sia Meador, Ash­ley Loyd, Kelia Moniz as well as a host of other com­peti­tors and non com­peti­tors alike. While all six teams were neck and neck through the first 10 min­utes of the heat, Team Love took a clear lead halfway through the heat while Team H.P.D main­tained sec­ond posi­tion. Despite an amaz­ing wave rid­den by Jen Smith of Team H.P.D towards the end of the relay, the com­bi­na­tion of wave scores and added points for fin­ish­ing first, cemented Team Love’s win of the event.
Thanks to all the com­peti­tors and the ROXY orga­ni­za­tion for their sup­port and efforts to make the first Surftech Women’s SUP chal­lenge a great suc­cess and a great step­ping stone to more women focused stand up pad­dle surf­ing events.

FINAL RESULTS
1. Team Love Points 27
2. Team H.P.D. Points 24.5
3. Team ONE Points 23
4. Team Roxy 1 Points 22.5
5. Team Ched­dar Points 20.5
6. Team Santa Cruz Points 19.5