A team of 10 Mexican stand-up paddleboarders just returned from Lima, Peru, where the Mexican team scored a third place overall in the International Surfing Association-sponsored World Stand-up Paddle and Paddleboard Championship 2013. Congratulations to Mexico, and especially congratulations to Sayulita, for almost the entire Mexican team was comprised of stand-up paddlers, both surfers and racers, from our little pueblo.
Long recognized as the surfing capitol of Mexico (other places have better surf but no other place in Mexico consistently produces better surfers), with this performance–and Sayulita’s recent domination of the Mexican national competition in Baja– Sayulita has laid claim to the title of Stand-up Paddleboarding capitol of Mexico as well.
The contest was held at Playa La Pampilla, Miraflores, near Lima. According to team member Fernando Stalla, with whom we spoke at the fundraiser held before the team departed last week (thanks to Leila Morris for hosting at Iguana Gardens), it’s a long beach with consistent beachbreak waves, both lefts and rights; it was chosen for its consistency, and though the waves weren’t spectacularly large, there were plenty of them, as was evident in the streaming video available throughout the week on the web.
These days, paddling contests include several different categories of events. While no one from Mexico actually won an event, the team’s consistently high rankings in every category lifted Mexico into third place overall. Pretty impressive considering the field included over 20 countries. Go Team Mexico!
The team arrived back in Sayulita on Sunday night, March 3rd, and were greeted with a raucous welcome home in the plaza. As you can see in the photographs, the Mexico team members were a happy crew—happy to have gone down to Peru and done well, and even happier to be back home in Sayulita. Team Mexico members and categories included Risa Mara Machucha, prone paddling women, Karen Jacobsen, SUP surfing women, Hector “Papas” Gonzalez and Guillermo “Tigre” Cadena, SUP surfing men, Diego “Burro” Cadenas and Antonio Valdez, prone paddling men, Fernando Stalla and Javier Jiminez, SUP racing men, and Marta Diaz, SUP racing women. Great job, Sayulita surfers and paddlers.
By the way, all those of you out there considering a visit to Sayulita: know that if you’re interested in learning to surf or stand up paddle, if you invest in some lessons while here you stand a fair chance of having as your teacher one of the top ten or twenty paddlers in the world. Sounds like a pretty good opportunity to me.
