20
Q & A
ING
with Stand Up Paddleboard UK ’ s , Anthony
INTERVIEW : EMMA LOVE PHOTOS : WARWICK REDWAY . PORTRAIT PHOTOS : EMMA LOVE IN MARCH , I ATTENDED THE RECENTLY LAUNCHED PADDLE UK WW SAFETY TRAINING PROVIDED BY ANTHONY ING . AFTER AN INTENSIVE TWO DAYS , WE SAT DOWN TO DISCUSS THE START OF HIS WW SUP JOURNEY , THE NEW WW SAFETY COURSES , AND HIS TAKE ON PADDLE UK ’ S DECISION TO BAN THE USE OF THE QR LEASH IN A WW ENVIRONMENT .
Tell me about your first WW SUP experience . This was when my wife , Lianne , and I were out working in California in 2010 . I was coaching kayaking on the Kern ( a grade 3 / 4 river ) when Corran Addison paddled past on a plastic SUP and pulled up into an eddie behind me ! Being young and cheeky , I asked my group to wait while I asked him many questions , ending with , “ Where can I try this ?”
Corran was planning a five-day river trip with raft support and rough sleeping on the beach , and much to my surprise , I had an invite ! On the way to the put-in , we stopped at a mountain bike shop and bought loads of body armour . And then it was four days of swimming down grade 5 water – it was awful !
What was your main takeaway from that experience ? Immediately , my head was filled with thoughts of , “ This is so new !”“ No one knows how to do this !” And , “ There must be a really good way of understanding how to paddle SUPs on white water !” My wife , Lianne , and I made the big decision to spend all our savings on boards and find a way to ship them to the UK from the USA . No one was selling them in this country ; that ’ s how new SUP was !
Fourteen years later – how established is WW SUP in the UK ? It ’ s just starting ! Five years ago , there were just a handful of us , consisting of a small Nottingham group and one or two individuals in Scotland . Both have now developed into massive scenes , and we have smaller peer-led groups developing nationwide .