SPORTS
PUSHING PADDLING TO ITS LIMITS Albufeira-born Diogo Sousa is making waves when it comes to stand-up paddleboarding. It looks like he has a very bright future ahead. He spoke to Nick Robinson from Algarve Addicts. It was 12 years from Cristiano Ronaldo’s first shot at European glory with the Portuguese national football team in 2004 until he tasted victory and lifted the trophy at Euro 2016 in France. The European Championship tournament takes place every four years; so if we say CR7 did it at the fourth time of asking, then can we stick our necks out and predict that Algarve resident Diogo Sousa will become a European champion at stand-up paddleboarding (SUP) in 2021?
“I was not expecting it. It was a good experience. All the top paddlers from Europe were there"
Diogo, who is 27 and was born and bred in Albufeira, had the honour of representing his country at EuroSUP Sardinia in 2018. He was Portuguese champion last year in what’s known as the ‘technical’ race and says: “The national coach keeps his eye on us until he decides who he is going to take to represent Portugal in the European championships. “I was not expecting it. It was a good experience. All the top paddlers from Europe were there, the level was high. I only did the technical race, I came ninth out of 15 or 16, I was aiming for top 10.” The Wikipedia website says that SUP involves participants “standing on their boards and using a paddle to propel themselves through the water”. The strength and conditioning of every part of the body has to be top notch; and then there’s being able to balance as you ride the waves of course. Even once you’ve got the fitness and ‘not falling off’ sorted, it’s not always a matter of straight line racing.
22
FOLLOW US ON TOMORROWALGARVE
Diogo says the technical racing, while being shorter distances of around 5km, involves “a course marked with some buoys… just be fast, do the turns, pass the shore break and surf the waves coming back around the buoys”. He makes it sound simple, but that’s because watersports have been Diogo’s life. “Basically I like being in the water,” he says. “When I was younger I was just ski-boarding, so just running after my board and sliding against the wake. Step by step I started to get involved with other watersports and then only later with SUP.” After his early teens working at the beach and then finishing high school, Diogo joined the navy for a year at the age of 17. After that, it was university in Faro, studying sports science and gaining practical experience at the Centro Nautico. “We had sailing, kayaking and windsurfing, you get into teaching those sports,” Diogo says. “When I finished university, me and a friend of mine, we already had a job offer.” And so it was off to Quinta do Lago (“at the lake, it’s a perfect spot for watersports”) for a summer season. There followed a period of working at a gym in Portimao, but Diogo felt he had to “get back in the water”. “I came back to Albufeira and I was working in a local sailing club at the marina, I was teaching sailing to the kids,” he says. “One year later [in 2016] I started my own paddleboard business. I just had to risk it and spend some money on it. Paddleboarding was growing, not just in Portugal but worldwide.” Paddleboarding tours can be booked through Albufeira Watersports Centre and SUP Albufeira, while the allnew SURF Albufeira has now been added to the slate. “We've been able to take a lot of people paddleboarding and exploring our wonderful coast,” Diogo says. “For me it’s the perfect sport. I usually tell people that I used to go kayaking until I got into paddleboarding. Once you’re standing up, the view is totally different.”
+INFO: diogosousa06 www.supalbufeira.com www.albufeira-watersports.com Algarve Addicts: www.algarveaddicts.com