On 15 November 2017, in the waters of Hawaii, Kai Lenny closed out the APP World Tour season with his eighth world title. No paddler had gathered more, in either discipline of the sport.
Eight titles, spread across wave and race
The APP World Tour crowns the best in stand up paddling across two very different tests: surfing waves and open-water racing. Lenny took the title on home water, in the Hawaiian channels where he learned the sport.
The mark set him apart because of its range. Most riders chase one discipline; his eight crowns reach across both wave and race, a spread few even attempt.
That the milestone came in Hawaii mattered. These are the same channels and reefs that shaped him, and the win folded his record neatly back into the place it started.
From an 18-year-old at Honoli'i to the record holder
The run began seven years earlier. In 2010, Lenny won the inaugural Stand Up World Tour at Honoli'i on the Big Island, becoming the first SUP surfing world champion at age 18 — the youngest the sport had known.
By 2017 that start had grown into a body of work. In 2016 he had crossed the 32-mile Kaiwi Channel to win the Unlimited division of the Molokai-2-Oahu Paddleboard World Championships in a record 4:07:41. It was the same reach that his titles now confirmed.
The eighth title placed him alone at the top of the sport's history. It also framed the years that followed, from foil crossings to big-wave awards, as the work of a waterman who first made his name with a paddle.
