Supdreaming

Supdreams with Céline

Supdreams is a relatively new Stand Up paddle School on the Cote d’Azur. Founded three years ago by triple French Paddle Board Champion Céline Guesdon, Supdreams offers a large selection of SUP activities for adults and also for children.

I met up with Céline one morning recently at the beautiful Port de l’Olivette. I asked her about her Stand Up Paddle School, her passions and her professional SUP career.

Tell me a little bit about Supdreams school.

The idea behind the school is to dream with a paddle and to be on the water. I actually launched my school three years ago, however at that time I was travelling a lot competing in SUP competitions all over the world. I have stopped competing professionally now so I am focusing 100% on developing my school.

The season starts for me around April time. This is when I begin organising SUP events and classes for the following months. I also offer private lessons for small groups and individuals. Yoga SUP is another activity I am promoting for adults and also for kids. I organised some SUP yoga when I was in Basque Country with a group of children and they really loved it so I will be organising the same thing here.

At the same time Supdreams will be developing a technical course. This class will be for people who know the basics but want to improve their technique so that they can get more pleasure from the sport. The plan is to organise these sessions twice a week  in Cap d’Antibes. The technical course will teach you things like how to stop, how to turn and how to start a race. Sometimes when I am on the water and I see someone doing something wrong, I really want to tell them how to do it correctly, of course I don’t, but that’s what gave me the idea to launch and develop a technical course.

Tell me a little bit about your professional SUP Career.

I actually discovered stand up paddle very late in my life. I was 30 years old the first time I tried it but it very quickly became my passion and I decided to invest everything in it and start to compete in this sport.

Before I was not at all sporty and I had never been on the water, it was crazy. Those first few times on the water I felt so great that I instantly knew it was where I wanted to be. After that everything seemed to happen very quickly.

Before discovering SUP I was a graphic designer for a company in Sophia Antipolis. My educational background was in the arts. So I was living in Cannes at the time and used to drive to work along the coast road. In 2011, on my drive to work along the coast, I saw two or three people in the sea on paddle boards. I had never anything like this before and I wondered what it was they were doing. After that I kept seeing people doing this paddle thing, I thought it looked very interesting so I decided I would try it.

One day I had the opportunity to have a go and I found it amazing. I loved it!

Then, I tried it a second time and I was hooked. Soon after I decided to buy a board so I could spend time on the water , maybe go to the islands and exploring around the coast. At some point after that I met JD (Jean-Denis) and after chatting to him for a while I decided to subscribe to his club and buy myself a little board. From then on I went out on the water often, either by myself or with the club. On one of those SUP trips I saw someone with a strange, skinny pointy board and thought to myself what is that? I found out it was a racing board used for competing so I decided to try that too. The competition board was very cool, unlike the regular boards you have a fantastic sensation of speed on the water, it’s a very different experience and I quickly fell in love with that too.

The competing just kind of developed from there.  A friend asked me one day if I wanted to go racing with him so I said OK I will come and watch. After watching the race I decided that the next time I would take a board and I would enter. That’s how it started. Step by step I competed more and more and within two years of having discovered the sport I quit my design job and began competing full time at the top level. I was the French champion three times and also came fourth in the world at the world championships.

Did you have a sponsor?

While I was competing I was sponsored by Bic Sup. My sponsor wasn’t that big as SUP was, and still is, a relatively unknown sport therefore there aren’t huge sponsorships available. However I had the opportunity to travel a lot with Bic SUP and they paid all of my expenses so that was great for me.

In fact that was a very amazing time for me! I was travelling all over the world including Japan and the US with them. It was a total change of lifestyle over a very short period of time.

Apart from SUP do you have any other passions?

Yes I do, I love photography and the arts in general. Those are my other passions. Oh, I forgot Cooking, that’s another passion of mine. I recently created Les cookies de Céline which is an online Cookie store.  I am  very interested in healthy eating and nutrition because in my sport it’s very important. My cookies are made without gluten and also without sugar for diabetics. At the moment people order cookies and then I make them in my kitchen and send them out, so the business is very small.

Les Cookies de Céline was born because I love nutritional and healthy food but I believe strongly that it also has to taste good and contain quality ingredients! That’s what I am trying to achieve with my cookies. I use only high quality produce and I try to use healthy ingredients and sugar alternatives but essentially I want to make a cookie which people will enjoy eating. That’s my goal with Les Cookies de Céline.

Now that I have stopped competing my focus is the SUP school and then the Cookies. Sometimes I will fit in some freelance Graphic design jobs too if I need to or want to.

I guess I have several passions really and I am lucky that my passions are also my job!

You have travelled a lot but if I was to give you a plane ticket to anywhere in the world where would you go?

Polynesia! I have never been there but I would really love to go. Otherwise my favourite countries are Mexico, Japan and the States. I would go back to any of those places anytime.

For more information on Celines’ Supdreams school and to join her mailing list go to: www.supdreamschool.com

To order some of her delicious cookies go to: Les Cookies de Céline

To receive new interviews and updates on news and events on the cap sign up for the newsletter.