The Air France Paddle Festival took Tahiti by storm, with one of the most intense races the sport has seen. Around 300 paddlers came out to participate in the 8k Lagoon Race, 24k Elite Race, and 4k Fun Race, alongside a huge crowd of local supporters from the community that joined in on the action.
Watch the 2018 Air France Paddle Festival live broadcast. The first stop on the 2018 Paddle League tour, the 5th Annual Air France Paddle Festival, is going down in the heart of French Polynesia.
Tahiti's largest stand up paddle event, the Air France Paddle Festival is building up to be an epic battle between top ranked international athletes and local Tahitian warriors planning to defend their home waters.
The Paddle League has revealed “stage two” of its plan to help unify the sport, bringing together 41 regional events across 24 nations in a bid to provide a more stable foundation for the future of stand up paddling.
New champions were crowned and a new generation stood up at the Hoe Toa Paddle Championships in New Zealand on the weekend, where Penelope Strickland and Tara Hope earned national titles, Australia’s Lincoln Dews gatecrashed the party with a clean sweep and over 200 paddlers hit the water for a big two days of racing.
The famous French Riviera hosted the inaugural Villefranche Paddle Race in style on the weekend, with a solid swell turning the usually placid Mediterranean Sea into a Salt Creek-style arena for a race that won’t be forgotten any time soon.
Tahiti's biggest stand up paddle event, the Air France Paddle Festival, is back for its 5th consecutive year and will be hitting the beautiful shores of Maeva Beach on Saturday April 7, 2018. Recently announced as the first event of The Paddle League's new World Tour, the event is expected to attract even more competitors than previous years, especially high profile athletes that are gunning for the crown.
In theory, the athletes who attend and do the best at the biggest events in paddle boarding throughout the year should be crowned world champions. Surprisingly enough, this hasn’t exactly happened quite yet in our sport. New for 2018, an organization dubbed “The Paddle League” has been announced and it will aim to do just that by “crowning a true international champion” all while pushing to elevate and grow the sport.