HISTORY OF L.O.S.C.

In July 2021, a total of 19 paddlers set off for the first ever 'LAKE OHRID SUP CROSSING'. These paddlers, most of them club members of 'Paddle Klub' joined by couple of SUP enthusiast, started the crossing at 7am marked by the now famous church bells sound of the St Naum Monastery. In perfect flat like conditions the group of paddlers finished the 26km course in 8 hours and all 19 paddlers made it to the FINISH. Officially making it the first group SUP crossing of Lake Ohrid.

On this edition, we officially had the first international paddlers joining the crossing. This year we have a total of 40 paddlers joining our main summer event from 5 different countries, including the youngest paddler to ever do the crossing to this date, the then 10 year old Kai Petreski. Again, all 40 paddlers finished the crossing without anyone dropping out.

The 2023 edition was the first time we introduced the race format. We created a 23km Long-Distance Race with 2 checkpoints before paddlers had to make a strong finish to the city of Ohrid. On this first edition of the race we had a total of 16 paddlers and with 70 paddlers joining the recreational adventure from a total of 15 countries, meant that our event started to get some Worldwide attention. The amazing Slovenian duo Luka Kozar and Maja Dolzan were the overall winners of the race respectively dominating their categories.

Over 100 paddlers joining the event made this one of the biggest SUP events in the region. On this edition with had over 60 paddlers joining the Long-Distance Race with both hardboards and inflatables, four times the number of paddlers we had the previous year. Luka Kozar became a back-to-back champion comfortably winning the 2024 edition, while in the women’s category the overall winner was the 14 years old Lena Nowak.

This celebratory 5th edition was definitely the most successful edition of L.O.S.C. with 125 paddlers registering for our main summer event. For the first time ever our club we organized a technical race that took the event to a new level. Nikitas Tzanakis was the overall winner on both the tech and long distance races setting a new record on the 23km long distance course with an incredible time of 2h 26min and 32 sec. In the women's category the podium saw the same winners in slightly different order with Eileen Batsford winning the tech race then finishing second in the long distance race and Roula Papadimidriou winning the long distance race and finishing second in the tech race. We also had another broken record on the long distance race with inflatables where Angela Kerr dominated the race as well as being crowned the overall winner of the technical race.

FUN FACT: On this edition we had paddlers joining us from 19 different countries which was incredible to see, compared to the first ever edition of L.O.S.C. where we only had 19 paddlers that joined in total.

This edition brought many broken records, many unforgettable moments in this epic version of our main summer event. Joep Van Bakel from the Netherlands crushed the 23km course record for hardboards by 10 min with an incredible pace of 10.1km/h marking a new record time of 2h16m09s. In the Inflatables category the Turkish national champion Yusuf Erken also had an incredible performance setting a new record on this long distance course with a time of 2h32m53s and in the womens category the Scotish paddler Angela Kerr inproved from her previous record and finished the race in 3h04m20s. The tech race brought in some incredible heats with the finals being epic. The hardboards category for men saw Slovenian paddler Maj Jokhadar in first place followed by Joep Van Bakel and Szabolcs Fodor, in the women's category the Greeek paddler Eirini Papadopoulou won and was followed by herr country woman Roula Papadimitriou and third was our very own Teodora Ristova. In the Inflatables category again the winner of the men's category was Yusuf Erken followed by Balazs Szilli from Hungary and Branislav Barashevich from Serbia, and in the women's category we had the first Macedonia to ever top a podium place in Kristina Simeonova from 'Paddle Klub' trailed by Petra Bozgad from Turkey and Cecilia Rajda from Hungary. L.OS.C. 2026 also featured the first edition of the 'Macedonian SUP Racing League' where we had local paddlers competing agains eachother before the international races and marked a great start to what is going to become a new addition to the L.O.S.C. format. All and all an epic editionn of our main summer event.