Lina Augaitis still laughs when she hears the words: world champion.
"It's funny," she said with a giggle. "I'm like, 'Me? OK.'"
The gold and silver medals she brought home from the World Stand Up Paddleboard Championships held earlier this month in Nicaragua, however, are no joke. Neither was the decision Augaitis made in January to quit her job as a teacher at West Vancouver's Mulgrave School to pursue a childhood dream of becoming a professional athlete.
"I really loved my job there, it's an amazing school," she said, adding that the decision was made all the more difficult by the fact that quitting at Mulgrave would involve giving up a sweet teaching gig in a location where teaching gigs aren't that easy to find.
"It's tough to get jobs in the city," said Augaitis. "I had a really nice one and it was a tough call.
But I'm not young - I'm 33 - and I knew that if I didn't do it now I wouldn't do it, and then I'd regret it. That would be the worst.. .. It was my childhood dream to be a pro athlete and I just felt like I had the chance, it felt like it was coming together. I had this moment that if I didn't take it I would probably be 60 years old and regretting it and talking about 'oh, if only I'd blah blah blah blah blah.'" The Ottawa native, who has lived on the West Coast for more than a decade, grew up racing a number of disciplines. A quick search through the North Shore News database has her name popping up in results for such varied sports as adventure racing, trail running and snowshoeing. Stand up paddleboarding came onto her radar when she stumbled upon the sport while on a trip to California in 2010.
When she returned home she entered a race in Vernon and blew the rather small field away.
"I'm kind of addicted to racing and so it was like, 'Oh. .. huh. .. paddleboard racing. Who knew?' And it kind of just blossomed from there."
Since then she's worked on her skills, putting enough wins on her resumé along the way to convince herself that she could compete with the best in the world. An a-ha moment occurred in 2013 when Augaitis raced alongside Squamish paddleboard pioneer Norm Hann in Hawaii and the two became the first Canadians ever to complete the more than 50-kilometre paddle in the Molokai2Oahu race.
This month's win at the worlds was the biggest of her young career. Augaitis's world title came in the SUP distance race, an 18-kilometre point-to-point trek that saw the racers weaving through a number of islands, hitting calm waters as well as open, choppy waves along the way.
There was trouble right from the start for Augaitis as her path was blocked by an inattentive boat driver right next to the start line.
"A boat was in our way," she said. "It was mostly in my way, just because of where I was standing. I almost touched the boat until it motored off, but then I got caught in the eddy of it. It ruined my strategy. My strategy was just to go out as hard as I could and kind of lose everybody, but I ended up in the pack."
Augaitis recovered well enough to join a group of three racers that separated from the pack. The trio became a duo as Augaitis and Australia's Shakira Westdrop pulled away for a duel to the finish. The Canadian thought she was certain for silver, not gold, when the pair reached the home stretch that included a fourkilometre section of downwind racing.
"You're following the waves and you kind of ride the bumps," she said. "You're kind of like surfing your way down. Generally that's not my forte, and (Shakira), she's actually a surfer. I got to that point and I was like, 'oh no, here it is, I'm going to lose it now.' I don't know what happened but I got in front of her. The last little section was a side-chop headwind, which is really hard on a stand up paddleboard, you go pretty slow. But it is my forte. I guess I saved a little bit of juice and I was able to hold the lead and I came in two minutes ahead of her."
Augaitis completed the race in one hour 58 minues and 24 seconds.
Two days later the same two racers battled for gold in the technical race, a shorter circuit involving three laps around a course that incorporated a number of tough turns and manoeuvres. This time it was the Aussie who claimed the win, edging Augaitis by six seconds.
"Obviously I would have liked to have won, but because it was such a good battle it was satisfying regardless," she said.
Augaitis left with new confidence that she could compete with, and beat, the best in the world. She also took home her two medals and one amazing moment on top of the podium. The championships included medal ceremonies complete with national anthems. Australia's anthem was in heavy rotation - Aussies won seven of the 12 golds up for grabs - but Augaitis was thrilled to hear the notes of "O Canada" on that Nicaraguan beach. She was the only Canadian to win a medal.
"That was probably like the coolest thing ever," she said of hearing the anthem. "It was pretty amazing, actually. It's always so special to be able to represent your country. In stand up paddleboarding we do it so rarely, it's so much more of an individual sport and not really about the country, so it was pretty amazing to cross the line in first.. .. I was more proud that I was doing it for Canada than I was doing it for myself.
She's hoping to hear that anthem a lot more. Maybe even at an Olympic Games. The International Surfing Association is lobbying to get its sports, including stand up paddleboarding, included in the Summer Games.
That's probably a long way off, but the sport has already come a long way. A few years ago many people didn't even know that it existed, said Augaits, and even now most people don't realize that it can be done competitively.
"(People) totally see it as a beach-cruising, fun thing to do. The reaction most of the time is, 'Oh, you can race those things?" The sport is changing at a rapid pace, as is Augaitis's life. Hence the chuckles at her new world champion status.
"I didn't think it would happen so quickly," she said. "I'm still kind of pinching myself."
