It’s not a joke: the Île-de-France surf league has just been inaugurated… in Melun. Not for the waves on the Seine but because of its stand up paddle (SUP) club, a member of the big surfing family. “The surfing disciplines are short board (Olympic), longboard, bodyboard, SUP, parasurfing, etc. There are no separate surf clubs and SUP clubs,” we specify to the national surfing federation, which has a total of nearly 180 clubs, 15,000 club licensees, 60,000 leisure licensees (temporary licenses for surf/SUP courses in structures labeled French Surfing Federation), and more than a million free practitioners.
“Île-de-France is not a joke for us. It’s a huge pool! I hope that many young people will join us. Not everyone lives by the sea, but everyone can go skiing,” enthuses Jacques Lajuncomme, the president of the FFS, who arrived from Biarritz (Pyrénées-Atlantiques) and who awarded Melun the city label stand-up paddle, the first in France.
