Lake Ohrid SUP Crossing
The Lake Ohrid SUP Crossing, in North Macedonia, just marked its fifth anniversary. Damjan Petreski, founder of Paddle Klub and race director of the event, shares what made this year’s edition stand out.
The fifth edition of the Lake Ohrid SUP Crossing in North Macedonia saw the breaking of many records as this was the most successful edition of our main summer event. A total of 125 paddlers registered, coming from 19 different countries, made this event unforgettable. For the first time ever, this year our club included a technical race to the L.O.S.C. race format after it was requested by the paddlers who have joined the previous editions. We had two days of SUPer fun racing done on one of the World’s oldest and most beautiful lakes.
On the first day of the race weekend, we organised the ‘Technical Race’ in front of one of the most recognizable and most beautiful structures on the Ohrid Riviera, the historic Hotel Biser situated in the 14th-century monastery complex of Kalishta. Paddlers had the pleasure of enjoying the ideal backdrop, making their experience a bit more special and memorable.
This race, as well as the long distance race, were dominated by the Greek paddlers: Nikitas Tzanakis was the overall winner for the paddlers using hardboards, followed by Luka Kozar and Maj Jokhadar from Slovenia. In the women’s category, Eileen Batsford finished first in front of Roula Papadimitriou and Ivana Ognjanovic from Serbia. In the inflatable category, first in the final heat was Rudy Van Haven from Austria, followed by Damjan Mozina from Slovenia and Branislav Barashevic from Serbia, and in the women’s category, we had the UK paddler Angela Kerr topping the podium, followed by Vesna Pajic from Slovenia and Zsuzsanna Pallagi from Hungary.
The second day was scheduled for our very known format of the ’23-km Long-Distance Race’ as well as the ’26-km Adventure’ for recreational or seasonal paddlers. This is a long and demanding race day for anyone who is into endurance racing/adventuring. This year, the top 3 paddlers who finished the crossing had a better time than the previous record at this course. An incredible tempo by all the paddlers from start to finish, with Nikitas Tzanakis breaking the record with an official time of 2h26m32s, followed by the double champion Luka Kozar and the Hungarian Balasz Dori in third place. In the women’s category, we had the Greek paddlers again in the top two places; this time Roula Papadimitriou finishing first and Eileen Batsford second, with Marliese Mendel from Austria in third. The Inflatable category saw the same winners from the tech race, just in a slightly different order with Rudy Van Haven on the top, Branislav Barashevich second, and Damjan Mozina in third. In the women’s category, Angela Kerr broke the previously held record of the 23km course with an incredible time of 3h14m18s, followed again by Vesna Pajic and Zsuzsanna Pallagi.
We hope to see you all join our 2026 edition and we’ll all celebrate the sport of SUP together.
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