End of season

“We’ve got to find joy in everything we do as the world has so much to offer. We should find what resonates with who we are - and have fun.” Sarah True shared her resolution with us at the start of this year and we’re using her words as an invitation to do an annual run down of all the history we’ve seen being made this year.

We’ve told them, but we’ve also lived through them: stories our athletes and our team have been the stars of during a year that has taken us to the most epic settings around the world, showing us the sport’s living history and taking us on an emotional journey. It was the year of the Paris Olympics (what an event!) where Hayden Wilde was runner-up on the most important day of the year, ending the year on his home turf at the Taupo 70.3 World Championship. The boys went back to Kona while Nice held the first women’s long distance world championships, at the same time the PTO tour let us enjoy watching our athletes shine brightly at its events. It’s been the longest season in history, so far.

This year we had the opportunity to get to know some of our athletes better, like Clément Mignon, the young Frenchman who joined the BMC team this year who explained to us what it feels like to swim in open water: “It’s very different to swimming in a pool because I feel more free, and it’s a different sensation because you don’t stop.”

We’ve got to know Ashleigh, who has been our reference for the T100 tour and who came runner-up in the final in Dubai - the Australian athlete has secured her place as a distance specialist. Then there are the worlds of Josh Amberger, a multi-disciplined athlete passionate about horticulture and coffee, whose talents combine to give him his unique and highly charismatic personality.

Then came Thor Bendix, Lucy Buckingham, Kristian Høgenhaug and Chris Leiferman who all helped us with our video tutorials on improving our swimming technique, giving us advice about caring for our equipment. 

We discovered the story of Txomin Dachary and we accompanied him on his challenge to swim from Mundaka to Guéthary, at the same time we got a little closer to Gautier Garranx and his passion for surfing giant waves.

At Orca Lab we’ve been working to live up to our commitment, and we’re ending a year where innovation and technology have been our torchbearers, alongside sustainability. We’re launching a new and more exclusive surf wetsuit, the Kabuki, which is 100% handmade, one by one in Japan. We’re completing our range of Tango wetsuits with different thicknesses of 5:4 and 4:3 and their respective versions with and without a hood. We’ve also continued working on new developments we hope to share with you next year.

We’ll bid you farewell with a desire to renew our commitment to wellbeing - our own as well as that of the environment we live in. Together we make the history we’re living, which is why we need to look after one another, in every possible way.