Lake surfers are quite a hardy bunch! They have to be. Most of the best waves in the Great Lakes come in the fall and winter. The water’s cold and you don’t get ground- swell. So, you could surf an ocean wave in Hawaii, and there might not be any wind at all, and you could still be surfing a 10-foot wave. In the Great Lakes, to get waves, they’re all wind-generated…. Often people say that if you can surf in the Great Lakes, you can surf anywhere.” In a nutshell, these Great Lake surfers look out their windows, waiting for what the rest of us would consider to be lousy weather, to grab their board and head out to the beach. “We go out on days that a typical ocean surfer would say forget it! I’m not going out today. It’s too windy and rough!’” Blu Wave is proud to be on the forefront of building the sport of SUP in Canada. There are, in fact, competitions on the race side and on the surf side of this emerging sport. “There are distance races from 5K to 20K. And even some of the marathon canoe and kayak races like the Muskoka River X, which is a 120 km race, are now offering a SUP division,” Pilon explains. “There’s another one up in the Yukon that now has a SUP category. So, it’s happening all around these types of competitions.”
The evolution of the sport is occurring quite quickly, all things considered. The racing side of SUP is becoming less of an add-on to canoe and kayak competitions, and one that is (pardon the pun) standing up on its own. Pilon points out that international sporting bodies are taking notice. “There’s a strong movement toward seeing paddleboarding as an Olympic sport in the next decade or so.” One might assume that the SUP culture resembles that of the coastal surfing scene or that of a snowboarding or an “X-Game”- type philosophy. But Pilon explains that the SUP culture is much more accessible to a wider range of participants at different skill levels of most “extreme” sports. This changes the profile of the SUP culture to be somewhat unique. “The SUP core demographic tends to be a bit older than that of the snowboarding and extreme sport people. I would say generally 30 to 60 years old rather than 15 to 25. You see a lot of athletes that have come into SUP racing that have been competitive athletes in other disciplines, whether it be triathlon, or other paddling disciplines like canoe and kayaking. Some of the top SUP racers in Canada are former Olympic athletes in these other sports. Many have found SUP racing as their second career as an athlete.”
“Great Lake surfing has grown in popularity over the last decade.”
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SPOTLIGHT ON BUSINESS MAGAZINE • AUGUST 2019
21 AUGUST 2019 • SPOTLIGHT ON BUSINESS MAGAZINE
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