Paddleboarding: From lockdown escape to the World Championships

The paddleboard explosion has been hard to miss.

During the summer months especially, no self-respecting beach in the UK would be complete without people pumping up their inflatable boards on the sand.

It is officially "a thing" but for one young teenager from Northern Ireland, it has become much more than that.

Molly McKibben is in Poland for the Stand Up Paddling (SUP) World Championships which get under way on Thursday.

The 17-year-old Bangor girl is the first person from Northern Ireland to take part in the competition, and she is the only junior on the GB team.

Like many people, Molly first got into paddleboarding during lockdown.

The Glenlola Collegiate pupil said going from lots of sport to no sport was a big thing for her.

"I had been playing hockey for school and it stopped. Taekwondo is a contact sport so it stopped.

"Paddleboarding was something you could do in lockdown as it is in the open and you could do social distancing.

"It came at the right time and I instantly loved it. It got me through lockdown.

"Sport was my get away from school work. I have being doing sport from such a young age - I have been doing taekwondo from the age of five."

Molly is no stranger to sport on the world stage - in 2019, she competed in the WITF Taekwondo championships and won her category.

Over the next few days, she will be facing the best paddlers in the world in her age group, with every continent represented.

The Republic of Ireland has its own Molly - Caoimhe Byrne is also blazing a trail in Poland.

Molly travelled to the Baltic Sea resort of Gdynia a few days before the competition to get the lay of the sea.

It has also given her the opportunity to meet some of the SUP heroes she follows on social media.

"Seeing all the professional athletes in person is pretty awesome," she said.

"They are competing for their country but they are willing to stop and chat and are full of advice."

She was particularly delighted to meet the current world champion, the American Fiona Wylde.

They had a lot to talk about - they share a love of the sport and they both have Type 1 diabetes.

Molly was diagnosed with the serious condition - in which a person's blood sugar level gets too high because they cannot make the hormone insulin - four years ago.

"It's been a wild journey - the transition from not having a medical condition to having something you are having to control every day," she said.

"Once you get an understanding of diabetes, sport is a big help. When young people get the diagnosis, they think: 'This is it, I'm going nowhere.'

"I want to make people aware that Type 1 diabetes is not going to stop you from doing what you want."

Her mum Claire, who is in Poland with Molly as chief kit carrier and cheerleader, says the diagnosis came as a shock.

"There's still a lot of misconceptions about diabetes," says Ms McKibben.

"It's completely random, can happen to anybody and the fact Molly continues on with her life and does so much with it, she's a good role model for younger people who maybe wonder how this is going to affect their ability to do the sports they enjoy."

Ms McKibben said paddleboarding lifted Molly up at a time when "there was really very little else", but she never imagined it would lead her to this point.

"I had no idea there was anything other than just paddleboarding for a little bit of fun," she said.

"I didn't know there was racing involved."

Iain McCarthy is the founder of Molly's hometown club SUP Hub NI and he is also competing in the championships.

He said that prior to Covid, paddleboarding was already the world's fastest growing water sport.

"Covid has just put that on rocket fuel," said English-born Mr McCarthy. "What we are seeing now is a wide catch.

"There's the recreational side, the mental health benefit side, the physical side and then there is the sport itself and that element is not going to be for everyone.

"But it is something that people can do as an alternative to whatever else they might do, or supplementary to whatever sport they might play."

Mr McCarthy said it was evolving as a sport with professional athletes crossing over into SUP from other disciplines and the holy grail for the entire community was for paddleboarding to be made an Olympic sport like surfing and kayaking.

He said he spotted Molly's talent a mile off and she has had to train hard to compete at this level.

"We have backed her to do this because it's important for people in our local community to have this experience, to talk about these types of events, to see what they are up against, meet other paddlers from around the world, get hints and tips," he said.

"We recognise we are not the greatest in the world, but exposure to this community is only going to help us grow and develop the community back home."