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Young SUPboarder team rider Ollie Laddiman has just returned from his first ever Stand-Up World Tour event held in La Torche, France. We caught up with Ollie to find out his thoughts on competing in this international world class event.
“Competing at La Torche was an amazing experience, seeing the professionals and the standard of the kids was mind blowing!! I really enjoyed being at the event seeing everything with my own eyes, not seeing it on a blurry laptop screen sitting on the sofa on a cold rainy day.
Competing with the worlds best kids was an eye opener, driving me to improve my SUP surfing, to try and bring it to a whole new level. It was good to see that kids were coming from all around the world, South Africa, Denmark, Holland, and most importantly Wales!! The competition was mainly dominated by French kids (obviously) but there was a large age range, from about 10-16 years old.
Hopefully we will be going back next year, it was such a good experience competing, and having surf every day of the week, in a 3/2 wetsuit at the end of October, what a treat!!
It seemed the location and the events infrastructure made it seem like a proper grown up event, similar to an ASP surfing set up. Stand up paddling is becoming of age!!” Ollie laddiman
Ollie knows what he has to do and by entering events like this he gains massive amounts of experience. Put that together with his smooth and fluid style Ollie is bound to start racking up to the podium wins soon.
Stay up to date with the Walsh ripper via his blog here.
Thanks to Tim Rowe for the video & photo.