NOOSA athlete Lachie Lansdown, 19, has claimed a hard-fought victory in this year’s Catalina Classic paddle board race in the stock category on his first attempt last week.
Lansdown, the current ISA Marathon paddle board world champion, came back from a disappointing Molokai 2 Oahu race where he finished sixth, to battle for more than 52km with rival – and good mate – American Jack Bark, to take the win with a 200m finishing sprint.
He completed the race in just over six hours and three minutes. Bark and Lansdown raced side-by-side rubbing boards for six hours of the race, in one of the closest races many observers had seen.
Bark, a veteran of this race, offered navigation advice and even drinking water when Lansdown’s support boat couldn’t resupply Lachie’s drink bottle. This has been a common sight over the marathon paddle board season, held over the northern summer months, with these two paddlers battling it out for line honours on the east and west coast of the USA, Hawaii and Mexico.
While the Molokai 2 Oahu paddle board race is widely known in Australia, within the paddle board community the Catalina Classic is more prestigious, with a long and rich history dating back to 1955, it is one of the last traditional paddle board races that does not include a Stand up Division.
The Classic is the event the Molokai 2 Oahu was modelled on. The race, held over 53km, starts on Catalina Island located just off Los Angeles, and finishes at Manhattan Beach, about 30 kilometres from downtown Los Angeles.
This year saw a record entry of more than 100 paddlers, with many more missing the cut off.
The finish also saw a huge crowd waiting to welcome the racers. Lansdown funds his racing by working part-time as a Lifeguard on Noosa Beach, and with some support from US based company Surftech and Bark Boards, ironically shaped by the father of his rival Jack, who provide him with boards to race.
He currently has no local sponsors, and had to take out a loan to get to the start line of the Catalina Classic.
