The European race season is coming to an end and the final 2012 Eurosupa rankings have just been published. Time for a resume and an outlook to 2013. Here is an interview with Eric Terrien. What some of you might not know is that he is not only Europe's top paddler, he is a founding member and acting president of the European SUP Association and on top of all his travelling and racing spends quite a bit time updating the website, calculating rankings and negotiating with the organizers. EuroSUPA is a non profit organisation created by European SUP riders for European SUP riders. This association has been created in France under the “law 1901″ for non profit associations.

In 2012, there were 12 Eurosupa races in 6 countiries, 7 Beach and 5 Long Distance Races with a total of 170 participants from 12 countries.

Overview of 2012 EuroSUPA Races:

Long Distance:
  • 25k XTREME, Majorca, Spain
  • Funglisse, France
  • SUP Race Cup St. Maxime
  • Lost Mills, Germany
  • Surf in the City Namur, Belgium
Beach Races:
  • Howzit, France
  • Zandvoort, Holland
  • North Point Classics, France
  • SUP Race CUP St. Maxime, France
  • Surf Expo, Italy
  • Roma One, Italy
  • Toro Loco, Somo, Spain
 
Hi Eric, tell us about the 2012 Europsupa race series? How did it go? 
 
We made quite a few changes to the rulebook compared to the previous years. One of the main change in 2012 was the "Elite Category",  The goal was to have a real competition between the top guys instead of having them split in several board categories. At the end of the season we are pretty happy with this change, we had very interesting races and we saw good fights between the top riders.
We are also very happy to see that many riders have done 2 races or more in 2 different countries or more. Some were chasing points to get up in the rankings, others just wanted to spend a nice SUP weekend. The important thing for us is to see that the riders are enjoying traveling to the events.  
 
You have also competed in quite a few overseas races. How is that different from the Euro races?
 
The Battle of the Paddle Dana Point is something you can not compare to any of our races and I would recommend to any rider to go to this event, it is way bigger than any of the races we have in Europe. But if you take this one out we can be very proud of our "Euro races". The organizers of the EuroSUPA sanctioned events have done a great job.
 
What is your vision for the 2013 Eurosupa season? Any confirmed races yet?
 
We wish to keep sanctioning the races that have been the most successful this year and we will include new races in the calendar.  As for the competition side, the number of participants in the events should keep growing. We also expect to see more overseas riders travelling to Europe to compete. We will also study the possibility to sanction SUP surfing contests as well. 
 
What does an organizer have to do if he wants to make his race an EuroSUPA event? What are the criteria?
 
First of all taking a look at the rulebook, the 2013 rulebook will be published soon, in all cases it will be very similar to 2012. Then send the event project at contact@eurosupa.com so we can study together the possibility to include it in the calendar.
 
Thanks Eric, for your time and keep up the good work!