SA Edges Closer to WSG Gold

SA, who won team gold in home waters in 2001, slipped to second place in the team standings, a minuscule 150 points behind hosts Peru, as the two frontrunners each lost one of their men and a longboarder in the cutthroat repecharge rounds.

Warwick Wright was the first South African to be ousted from the event, the 2002 ISA World Junior champion finishing fourth in his repecharge Round 6 heat to place equal 21st overall in the men’s division.

Longboarder Brad Weare was the next to go. Relegated to the repecharge rounds after placing third in qualifying Round 3, the Durbanite fought his way through his repecharge Round 4 heat but came up short in a high scoring Round 5 heat where he ended fourth to finish the event ranked equal 15th.

Wright’s final placing earned 1 520 points towards SA’s team total while Weare contributed 850. With Peru losing Javier Swayne (1 800 points) and longboarder Juan Jose Corzo (720 points), the host nation now holds a slender statistical lead after six days of competition.

However, both SA and Peru will be watching the powerful Australian team nervously. The multiple ISA World Games champions lost Mark Richardson early in the event and Rebecca Woods in the women’s division yesterday and currently sit 510 points behind SA, while defending team champions USA are 2 880 points further back in fourth place after losing three men and one woman.

In yesterday’s action SA’s Chantelle Rautenbach posted an outstanding heat victory to move into the last eight in the women’s qualifying rounds. The current SA Open women’s champion posted a 15.73 point heat total, comprising rides of 7.33 and 8.40, and will go into today’s heat against World Tour stars Sofia Mulanovich (PER) and Paige Hareb (NZL) and 14 year-old American Kulia Doherty full of confidence.

Meanwhile Stacey Guy put her disappointment at being relegated to the repecharge rounds behind her with two gutsy second place performances to move into today’s Round 6 of the women’s division.

Matthew Moir remained in contention for a third ISA Longboard gold medal in as many events by holding onto second place in his qualifying Round 3 match-up to progress to the last 12 in the division.

Meanwhile SA’s captain courageous, Greg Emslie, continued his charge towards a medal by convincingly winning both his repecharge heats. Emslie, who has vowed not to lose twice in the event after surprisingly dropping into the repecharge rounds in the huge and wild surf on Day 2, even had time to assist teammate Chad du Toit while they were competing against each other in Round 7.

Having already locked in scores of 8.0 and 7.03 for a heat winning 15.03 point tally, Emslie then used the smart heat tactics he perfected in his nine years on the World Tour to ensure that third placed Javier Swayne (PER) did not catch a wave that could see him overtake du Toit for second place, ensuring that both South Africans progressed to the next round.

“As the heats go on, the competition is definitely getting harder and you have to surf smarter,” Emslie said in his post-heat interview.

Today’s second last day of competition will see the event moved to the left breaking waves of Senorita’s which picks up more swell than the right breaking Caballeros on the other side of the Punta Hermosa bay.

The action starts at 3.30pm SA time with the penultimate qualifying rounds of Longboard, Men and Women, featuring SA’s Matt Moir, Casey Grant and Chantelle Rautenbach respectively. That is followed by two rounds of repecharge heats across the three divisions where SA’s Greg Emslie, Chad du Toit and Stacey Guy will be fighting tooth and nail to stay in the top two places in each heat and progress to tomorrow’s final day.

Surfline, the official surf forecasters for the event, expect the current swell to hold up with waves around chest to head high today as a new swell fills in and produces occasional overhead waves that remain for the finals tomorrow.

All the action at the 2010 Billabong ISA Word Surfing Games can be followed live on www.billabongisaworldsurfinggames.com starting at 8.30am daily (3.30pm in South Africa). Daily updates and images will be posted on www.surfingsouthafrica.co.za and further updates will be available on the Facebook page Surfing SA.

The 2010 South African surfing team is supported by the National Lottery Distribution Trust Fund and Surfing South Africa along with Skullcandy, PowerBalance and Future Life.

Surfing South Africa (SSA) is recognized by the South African Sports Confederation and Olympic Committee (SASCOC) as the governing body for the sport. SSA is a member of the International Surfing Association (ISA).