The best moments of 2025
In June, Fernando Pimenta, James “Jimbo” Russell, Jose Ramalho, and Bruno Kolozsvari dig deep to sprint hard after 13 minutes of flat-out racing. They cross the finish line at the senior men’s short course race in Ponte de Lima in that order. Jimbo is just half a second behind Pimenta, all four of them are separated by just 2.85 seconds.
Two days later, Vanda Kiszli and Anna Sletsjoee are neck and neck with 900 metres remaining in the 26.2km senior women’s marathon. A moment before the final portage, Sletsjoee takes the lead. She holds it all the way through the portage, gets into the water first, and builds a 30 metre lead coming into the finish for her first European marathon title.
In August, a rapidly worsening side wind made things hard for the paddlers racing on Xinglong Lake in Chengdu, China. But Melina Andersson appears totally unaffected as she out-paddles Vanda Kiszli to take the lead in the World Games marathon. In the last kilometres, she seemed to get faster and faster until she finished nearly 2 minutes ahead of Vanda: a true feat of domination.
In the men’s short and long course races in China, Hamish Lovemore becomes one of the only paddlers who can meaningfully challenge Mads Pedersen in a marathon race in 2025. He takes silver medals behind Mads by just 0.15 of a second in the short course and 10 seconds in the marathon.
And those were just the best moments of the 2025 international marathon racing season before the World Championships in Gyor, Hungary.
It’s been a great year in paddlesports, and to celebrate, Paddlecast co-hosts Betsy and Billy have awarded “Paddler of the Year” and “Paddle of the Year” accolades to the paddlers who impressed them most this year and who received the most nominations from Paddle Daily fans. The full episode of Paddlecast is available on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.
Here are your 2025 winners and nominees for Marathon Paddler of the Year…
Marathon Paddler of the Year Winner: Melina Andersson
To fully appreciate what 2025 meant for Melina Andersson, it’s worth rewinding to the end of 2024. Melina won the short course and U23 long distance race at Worlds in 2022, but the senior long course win eluded her: she finished 2nd to Hungarian Vanda Kiszli in 2022 and 2023. The Hungarian legend had picked up where her compatriot Renata Csay left off, and hardly missed a gold medal for 8+ years. Finally, at the 2024 Worlds in Metkovic, Croatia, Melina claimed gold. It was an epic race where Melina only pushed ahead of Vanda in the last 200 metres or so, and even she seemed surprised to win.
At the beginning of 2025, the question became: Is the era of Vanda Kiszli over? Are we now in the era of Melina Andersson?
By the end of the World Championships in Gyor, the answer was resoundingly clear. Welcome to the era of Melina Andersson.
Although Melina missed the European Marathon Championships due to illness (opening up that golden opportunity for the rising star Anna Sletsjoee), she showed her full speed at the World Games in Chengdu, China where she took gold in both the short and long course events. In the long course, Melina got the better of Vanda by nearly 2 minutes, an impressive margin.
At World Championships in Gyor, the smallest misstep on a portage just barely cost Melina the short course gold (taken by Hungarian Zsoka Csikos) but she returned with a vengeance to win the long distance race 4 seconds ahead of Vanda while Anna Sletsjoee took bronze. The margin may have been smaller than Melina’s World Games win, but it was decisive. She’s the woman to beat.
Melina had an outstanding year in sprint as well, which is arguably her main focus, so keep an eye out for how she progresses during the current Olympic cycle: according to Melina, marathon racing has helped her get faster in sprint.
Marathon Paddler of the Year Nominees
It was hard to narrow down the list of which paddlers stood out the most in 2025, but a few notable names rose to the top.
Mads Brandt Pedersen, Jose Ramalho, and Will Short were amongst the nominees for marathon paddler of the year. The only barrier to Mads winning the award – similar to Cory Hill in the surfski category – is his sheer consistency of top results. Can winning world titles in 2025 count as a significant step up for Mads when he’s already won so many world titles in previous years? That said, his early breakaway to win in Gyor was next level – so stay tuned to hear more about Mads in the “Paddle of the Year” category.
Will Short
Arguably Britain’s most promising young paddler, Will Short thoroughly dominated the junior racing at both European and World Marathon Championships in his final year under 18. He started with a win in the short course race at Europeans where he was up against Ireland’s rising star Sean Butterly. Coming into the take-out on the final portage, Sean was leading, but Will put in a burst of land speed to overtake him by the time they reached the put-in. First into the water, he pulled away quickly and won by a solid 9 seconds.
In the marathon, it was 2024 European & World junior medalist Leonardo Candela from Italy who had a better race, but Will still snagged silver. And in K2 with partner Alex Worgan, he went three for three podium placements and took bronze behind two Hungarian crews.
At Worlds in September, Will proved his results at Europeans were no fluke. This time, he had a clear lead going into the final portage of the short course, and won again by a clear margin: 6 seconds ahead of Hungarian Merse Molnar and Orlan Coattrieux of France. It was his first world title, perhaps a sign of things to come.
Unfortunately, illness prevented Will from finishing the marathon in K1, but he recovered just in time to take second place with Alex Worgan in K2 behind the Hungarian crew of Zarand Lanczi / Kevin Budai. For those counting across Europeans and Worlds, that’s Gold/Silver/Bronze/Gold/Silver, five medals for six races.
While 2026 marks a big step up for Will from the Junior category to the Under 23 category, he’s lucky that Philip Knudsen (Mads Pedersen’s 2025 K2 partner and protege) will have just aged out of the category after taking the U23 world title back-to-back in 2024 and 2025 followed by silver medals in 2022 and 2023.
Fernando Pimenta
After the nominations closed and the official Paddlecast Paddler of the Year episode was recorded, Fernando Pimenta popped into the comments.
Earlier in the year, Paddlecast noted that Pimenta’s multidisciplinary prowess took him to an impressive triple set of titles: 2025 European Champion in the Marathon Short Course (3.4 km), Sprint 5 km (ahead of Adam Varga and Mads Pedersen, no less), and Sprint 1 km (the Olympic distance of 1000m). June was an outstanding month for Pimenta.
But was 2025 a major step up for him? And should he be considered for Marathon or Sprint paddler of the year? It’s hard to say when his collection of medals over the years from Worlds, Europeans, and Olympics across marathon and sprint is already so vast. Pimenta seemed to choose his races carefully in 2025, and performed right at the top of the races he chose. Perhaps we’ll see him back in the marathon distance in 2026 – someone needs to give Mads Pedersen more of a challenge next year, and Pimenta is one of the few who can.
Marathon Paddler of the Year: Honourable Mention
Although the award was designed to be bestowed on just one paddler, it’s well worth acknowledging that the most exciting race in Gyor was the Senior Women’s K2. And that was down to the performance of one particularly brilliant pair of paddlers: the Two Tanias.
Tania Fernandez Garcia and Tania Alvarez Yates from Spain have known each other since they were girls. Having the same passion for paddling and the same name, it felt like fate to end up in K2 together. Their first world title came in 2022 when they took gold by nearly 10 seconds ahead of the formidable Hungarian pair of Renata Csay / Zsofia Czellai. After settling for silver together in 2023 (by less than half a second) and 4th in 2024 (by 1.2 seconds), they were determined to have a perfect race and take the win. And that’s exactly what they did.
2025 was also the year they took their second Sella Descent win together. Any time the Two Tanias team up, they’re worth watching – wherever that takes them in 2026, we’ll be tuning in.
Watch the full Marathon segment on Paddlecast for more on all the nominees and the final decision to award Marathon Paddler of the Year 2025 to Melina Andersson:
Subscribe to PaddleDaily.com and follow Paddle Daily on Facebookor Instagram to make sure you don’t miss the official announcements for the remaining Paddler of the Year categories: Sprint Paddler of the Year and Paddle of the Year. Read all about the Surfski Paddlers of the Year here.
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