When Jay Wild discovered the outrigger canoe eight years ago, he had no less a goal than to become the best paddler in the world. But it would be the sport of stand-up paddleboarding (SUP) that would propel Wild closest to his dream. A Truckee resident and owner of Waterman’s Landing in Carnelian Bay, in the last three years Wild has become one of the top stand-up paddleboarders in the world, and one of the only ones that trains on a lake.
In 2003, Wild and his wife Anik, a former professional skier and Canadian national champion for high kneel canoe, were introduced to the Truckee-Tahoe Outrigger Canoe Club on Donner Lake by a friend. Wild fell in love with the feeling of moving effortlessly over water.
“Being on the water and experiencing the glide, coming from the mountains, I was missing that in my life,” said Wild, 34, who moved to Tahoe in 2002 from Southern California. “In one stroke you can glide quite a ways. An average stroke has a 15- to 20-foot glide.”
By 2006, Wild was so hooked he bought his own single-person canoe (the club uses a six-person canoe) and started training rigorously year-round. He entered his first Wavechaser race, and proceeded to get his “butt kicked.” Wild used his loss as motivation to train even harder. It was then that he discovered SUP, which was just taking off as a new sport, as a way to cross-train. But as he competed in more and more SUP races, his stand-up paddleboarding career took off. He calls 2011 his breakout year. From that point on, Wild was placing in the top 20 in the Battle of the Paddle in Dana Point, the closest thing the nascent sport had to a world championship. In 2012, Wild was one of five selected to represent the United States at the first International Surfing Association World Stand-Up Paddle and Paddleboard Championship in Peru. He helped the U.S bring home a silver for the team, and placed fourth in distance racing (his other discipline is surf racing).
Wild estimates that he is ranked 30th in the world in SUP, and in the top five in the U.S. “on a good day.” If you look at the race results listed on his website for the past five years, it is a list of first and second finishes. Wild used to compete in up to 25 races a year, both outrigger canoe and SUP, but this year he is planning on only taking part in 11 races to spend more time with his 2-year-old son Jaxsen and run his many businesses: Waterman’s Landing café and paddle shop, Tahoe Apex Adventure bungee and ropes course in the Northstar Village, and Paddle Elite Fitness, which includes one-on-one coaching, Team Tahoe Waterman Training, Tahoe Junior Waterman summer camps, and nine fitness classes a week starting in May.
So how, with all these commitments, did Wild get to be at the top of his game? Wild credits two things: Lake Tahoe and his training schedule.
“I don’t think I would have had the same success if I lived at a different lake,” said Wild, noting that most of the elite paddlers train on the ocean off the coasts of Hawaii, Southern California, Florida, Australia, Spain, and France. “This is like an ocean at times — it gets big wind storms and generates good training conditions.”
And any season, whether it’s cold and windy in winter or flat water in summer, Wild is out on the lake training three to six days a week. When not paddling, he does CrossFit.
“I may not be the fastest paddler in the world, but I still get to race against the best paddlers in the world,” he said.
Waterman’s Landing is hosting a free SUP demo day and clinic on May 25, watermanslanding.com. For a schedule of fitness paddle classes and summer camps, visit paddleelitefitness.wordpress.com.
