Anna Tschirky is one of the world’s top stand-up paddlers. Since her profile in Boards #4, she has taken a year off to devote 100% of her time to her passion. Her break began just four months ago, and since then she’s been putting in one performance after another. Such is her progress that her lifelong inspirations are now her direct competitors.
Text: Pauline Katz
Anna has been rowing on her beloved Lake Thun since she was 12. At just 19, she is already a six-time Swiss champion. She now regularly takes the family car to compete in world-class events. And her sabbatical year is off to a flying start. With her final exam just completed, Anna set off for the World Sup Festival on the Costa Blanca. In less than 24 hours, Anna was crowned with a compulsory school-leaving diploma and a fine twelfth place on the international scene.
There are three disciplines in stand-up paddle (SUP): long distance (over 8 km), technical race (under 8 km) and sprint (200 m). Anna excels in the ultimate discipline: long-distance races. These require faultless preparation to withstand several hours of intense effort. She also competes in the other two disciplines, however, and even surprised everyone by coming fourth in the technical race at the last European championships. This was by no means Anna’s only performance this summer, with several podium finishes in the EuroTour, 5th place in the European Championships and 9th in the World Long Distance Championships. So it’s not too early to say that this has been a successful sabbatical year.
The recipe for performance
If you don’t come across her with her board under her arm, you’ll certainly come across her with cross-country skis or trail shoes on her feet, and when it comes to recharging her batteries, it’s at the stove that she lines up. In fact, Anna is convinced that any sporting performance begins on the plate and even has an Instagram account specially dedicated to this (@bananna_eats). There you can discover delicious recipes for better performance on the water. SUP is a niche sport, but one with enormous potential, and Anna is delighted to be able to contribute to its development. The sport could even become Olympic one day, although there’s still a long way to go (horizon 2032). Even though Anna dreams of making a living from her passion one day, she is well aware that few riders manage to do so. Her potential is enormous, however, and she is grateful to her current sponsors and any future collaborations that might help her to achieve her sporting feats.
World Championship: a word from Andi Saurer, President of SUP Switzerland
“The Swiss delegation to the SUP World Championships in Gdynia, Poland, comprised nine of our athletes. Several excellent performances enabled our small nation to climb to 10th place in the country rankings. In addition to Anna’s good results, already mentioned in the article above, Guido Donzé and Peter Mülhauser achieved a hat-trick of top-20 finishes in all three disciplines. In addition, our women’s representatives (Anna Tschirky, Loreline Rossel and Leilou Spano) took Switzerland to the top of the nations’ rankings in the technical race and second place in the long-distance race. In the youth category, Nathan Denis finished 15th in the sprint and 32nd in the long distance.
