There’s a new strategy in sight.
After the departure of the French veteran dog Pierre-Louis Costes (34yo), who were a part of the 
team since 2011, and Australian alligator Lewy Finnegan (29yo), the Pride Bodyboards operations gang completely rethought its athlete hiring strategy which seems to be now supporting the young blood.
The new strategy is now dependent and based on the worldwide young generation of riders, such as Aussie Liam Lucas, Portuguese Steph Kokorelis and Chilean Moises Silva, for example, but also a few blooming groms like Gui Montenegro from Brazil, and Mael Martinez (son of the legendary competitor Yvon Martinez), Unax Pascual, and Merlin Greze-Bies, all of them based in the old European country.
Gui was the 2023 world tour Pro Junior vice champion and is 14 years old. He signed for the next three seasons. The other riders are between 15 and 16 years old. All compete on the IBC Bodyboarding World Tour – last season Unax ranked 5th, and Merlin 19th.
“The idea is to find the next gem and support them in their quest. Mael Martinez has the best style amongst all groms in Europe at the moment, Unax had a great progression lately and to me Gui is the best junior in the world today”, says without any doubt Sebastien Boulard, Marketing & Team Manager at Napco Global.
One thing we know for sure: these kids are super keen and have a really good mindset. Pride’s recent measure seems frankly good to us, and even very refreshing in the bodyboarding industry, which, as we mentioned before, is completely adrift. It even takes us back to other times where Pride’s strategy was based on the new generation and use to highlight the following tagline in their campaigns:
“Here Comes the Future”.
