How the ICF SUP World Cup & Paddle UK SUPER Festival Used Mapzest to Guide a Five-Day Festival Across Two Venues
How the ICF SUP World Cup and Paddle UK SUPER Festival used Mapzest to guide elite athletes and the public through five days of racing, a festival village and a world record attempt on the English Riviera.
Five days, two venues, one week of racing and a world record attempt
From 24 to 28 June 2026, the English Riviera hosted the ICF SUP World Cup and Paddle UK SUPER Festival - the first time the International Canoe Federation has brought a SUP World Cup of this scale to the UK, and the first major event since Paddle UK became the sport's national governing body. Around 200 of the world's top stand-up paddleboard athletes raced across Torquay Inner Harbour and Torre Abbey Sands, in sprint, technical and long-distance formats, while a parallel SUPER Festival programme opened the same racing - in festival format, on borrowed boards if needed - to absolutely anyone.
That's elite World Cup heats, community races for six different age brackets, a festival village running for twelve hours a day, and a planned SUP1000 world record attempt, all sharing a week, a stretch of coastline and one audience trying to work out what's actually happening where. A single event page was never going to hold all of that. Mapzest gave the week a live, filterable guide instead - one place where a Friday sprint heat, a Saturday SUPolo session and Sunday's record attempt all sat side by side, exactly where and when they were actually happening.
One map, two venues, a whole week
Torquay Inner Harbour and Torre Abbey Sands, together on the same map
The World Cup and the SUPER Festival didn't run from a single site - racing, the festival village and the community sessions were spread across Torquay Inner Harbour and Torre Abbey Sands, Torquay's main beach, over five separate days. Rather than two venues each needing their own directions and their own explanation, Mapzest put both on one map, filterable by Food & Drink, Entertainment or Family activities, with each location's own card - address, photos and what was actually happening there - a tap away.
A week that doesn't fit on one printed sheet
Festival village hours, tech heats, SUPolo and sprint races, all in the order they happened
On one day alone, the festival village opened at nine, ICF Tech Heats started thirty minutes later, SUPolo ran from ten, and the Festival Tech Races followed at half past eleven - four things, one venue, overlapping start times, repeated across five days of the week. Mapzest turned that into a single scrollable list a spectator or competitor could actually use, filtered down to Entertainment, Family & Attractions, or whatever they'd come for that day.
Elite heats and community racing, on the water at the same time
What's actually happening right now, laid out side by side
An ICF Tech Heat, a SUPolo match and a Festival Sprint Heat could all be running on the same stretch of water within the same couple of hours - one for the 200 elite athletes chasing World Cup points, the others open to anyone who'd turned up with a board. A spectator standing on the beach needed to know which was which, and when the next one started. Mapzest's timeline view laid the whole day out like that, side by side, instead of leaving it to a printed running order to explain.
A festival village that runs all week, not just on race day
Twelve hours a day, throughout the week, at The Banjo in Torquay
Not everyone who came down to the seafront was there for the racing. Throughout the week, The Banjo in Torquay hosted the event village - activities, brands and retail, open from nine in the morning until nine at night, independent of whatever was happening out on the water. Mapzest gave the village its own listing alongside the races, so it was just as discoverable to a family out for the afternoon as the World Cup heats were to a competitor.
Racing for everyone, not just the World Cup field
Sprint, technical and distance races - in ICF events or in festival formats
The SUPER Festival's own pitch was direct - something for everyone, with sprint, technical and distance races available either as ICF competition or in a festival format anyone could enter. The Festival Sprint Heats sat on Mapzest exactly like every elite World Cup race did - its own listing, its own start and finish time, discoverable by anyone browsing the day rather than buried in a section only competitors would think to look for.
Building towards a world record, in public view
The week built towards a planned SUP1000 world record attempt at Torre Abbey Sands - 1,000 paddlers on the water simultaneously. A moment like that only works if enough people know it's happening, know where to be, and know exactly when. Sitting on the same live guide as every heat and every festival session meant the record attempt wasn't a separate announcement to track down - it was already exactly where anyone planning their week around the festival was already looking.
The English Riviera's coastline is exactly where offline matters
Torquay Inner Harbour and Torre Abbey Sands are open seafront, not indoor venues - a week of thousands of spectators and competitors spread along the coastline, on a mobile signal that was never designed for it. Because Mapzest works offline, the guide a visitor loaded before arriving kept working throughout the week regardless of how the network held up, right along the water's edge where it mattered most.
A five-day event needs more than a results page
Putting the week onto Mapzest solved the on-site experience for competitors, volunteers and spectators. Before the festival arrived, the same event information became the basis for building awareness of it - individual content introducing the scale of the field, the SUPER Festival's own open-to-all races, the festival village at The Banjo, and the support of partners like Torbay Council and the English Riviera BID Company, rather than one generic announcement that a World Cup was coming to Torquay.
That gave the event a steady run of real, specific stories to post in the run-up to race week - not just a countdown, but actual reasons for local paddlers, families and visiting fans to start planning their own week around it.
ICF SUP World Cup & SUPER Festival Project Highlights
A few highlights of what Mapzest provided to achieve a full digital event experience
- Multi-venue map Torquay Inner Harbour and Torre Abbey Sands, together
- Full week schedule Every heat, session and festival slot across five days
- Gantt-style timeline view See exactly what overlaps, at a glance
- Offline capability Built for an open seafront, not an indoor venue
- Festival village listing The Banjo, Torquay - discoverable independent of race day
- Elite and community races, side by side World Cup heats and SUPER Festival sessions, equally visible
- World record attempt promotion The SUP1000 attempt, on the same guide as everything else
- Data import We imported races, sessions, venues and partners
- Awareness campaign Individual content for athletes, festival races and partners
- Project manager and on-site support Legs on the ground to help support