Bianca's Silver Swansong

SILVER ENDING: An evocative salute to one of our very best, Bianca Buitendag. Photo ISA / Evans

Buitendag, who earlier in the week said that these Games would be the swansong to an international career that started at the age of 13 in the waters of Victoria Bay in the Southern Cape, had a tough draw but came into each heat with nothing to lose and everything to gain, with Team Manager Greg Emslie quietly and studiously working behind the scenes to assist her in ensuring a competitive edge.

She took on Australian great, seven-time world champion Stephanie Gilmore in the third round yesterday, and stunned the Aussie favourite, beating her relatively comfortably.

Today was a different day at Tsurigasaki Beach after Tropical Cyclone Nepartak had peaked overnight bringing in wild, unruly 4-6ft seas in blustery conditions. The quarter-final with Yolanda Hopkins, the No 9 seed from Portugal, was comfortably dealt with by the statuesque surfer from Vic Bay, a place where she learned how to fight for waves in a tough, male-dominated lineup.

TALLEST TO SHORTEST: Bianca, Carissa and Amuro with their Olympic medals. Photo ISA / Jimenez

A stiffer task awaited her in the semi-finals. However, quite unusually for the US wunderkind, No 2 seed Caroline Marks was dispatched with ease, 11.00 to 3.67, and suddenly a silver medal lay guaranteed before Bianca in the final, or dare we hope, a gold, with No 1 seed and four-time world champion Carissa Moore lying in wait.

But a clue lay in Bianca's comments after beating Marks in the semi: “The ocean is wild. It can go anyone’s way. It really is just a question of chance out there. I really fought with everything that I had, I had nothing left. The tank was empty by the time I got out of the water.”

It proved to be a bridge too far on the day despite Bianca's prediliction for bigger waves. The storm had overnight turned conditions in her favour. She is perhaps the tallest female surfer at the Olympics but she could not find the waves she needed to string together meaningful scores.

STORM SURF: A big hit off the top of a bumpy section for the surfer in red. Photo ISA / Reed

Moore went quickly to work and halfway through the heat had amassed two solid scores for the conditions, a 7.6 and a 7.33 while Bianca struggled to move beyond a low scoring 3.23. She did manage a better wave, a 5.23, but it left her too much to do, needing either a 9.70 or another two 7.5s, but with time running out, this turned out to be a bridge too far, and the ocean failed to oblige.

A bronze medal surf-off between Caroline Marks and the young Japanese surfer Amuro Tsuzuki ended with the latter holding the bronze.

But take a bow Bianca Buitendag. Your achievements will go down as one of the better medal performances by a South African at an Olympics, given the draw she had.

And hearts go out to Jordy Smith, who would have revelled in these conditions. There was no issue of small waves on finals day in Japan, and while not quite as big as the rogue wave behemoth as beautifully crafted by Hokusai in his Great Wave off Kanagawa, a stretch of coastline in sight of Mount Fuji just 70km southeast of Tsurigasaki Beach, there would have been plenty of grunt to keep the big man happy.

MASKED JOY: Kanoa Igarashi, Italo Ferreira and Owen Wright on the podium. Photo ISA / Jimenez

The men's event, which was kind of cool and great to see but somehow ... er ... missing something, Brazilian Italo Fereira, current world #2 in the World Surf League championship tour, took gold. Of course he did in surging onshore beachbreak chunks!

Ferreira used his trademark whip-slash mixed martial arts style to vanquish Japan's Kanoa Igarashi into the Silver, while Aussie Owen Wright won the surf-off for Bronze against Gabriel Medina of Brazil.

Just as well. This gave a nice international flavour to both podiums in the surfing, which were shared by a Hawaiian, a Brazilian, a South African, a Australian and two local heros from Japan.