With the surf lifesaving clubs reaching their State and Australian title finale, it's now time for the Surfing Sutherland Shire boardrider clubs to get back to the beach.
Garie Boardriders are celebrating their 40th year in 2018 as are Cronulla Sharks Boardriders who started back in 1978 out of the ashes of the strong Midway Club which had changed its name to Cronulla as it faltered at the end of its existence.
Cronulla held its first contest for 2018 on Saturday, 40 years after Cronulla lifeguard and Australian Triathlon hall of famer Mark Pringle won the first club contest in 1978.
Held in small waves at the Nth Cronulla Wall with 70 starters over four divisions, the open final was won by former club champion Jordan Widenstrom over Blake Sawtell and 2017 club champ Ricky Marshall.
For the first time, Cronulla held a junior girl’s division where eight girls surfed their own final with Grace Gosby taking it from Lucy Maurer and Tara brown.
Jake Brown won the under 13 boys and Jordy Turansky defeated Kalani vandepolder in the under 16s.
Garie Boardriders club have also held their first contest after holding a 40th anniversary presentation where their 2017 champions were honored.
The oldest “Dukes” division was won by Hans Bendl and, 35 years after winning the club junior title, Brett Daintry also took the over-45 Masters title.
The Micro Girls division was taken out by Jess Hutchison and the boys by Beau Wallace.
In the Juniors, and for only the second time in the history of the club, Mitch O’Loughlan and Cruz Mckee both finished on equal points.
The 2017 Opens winner was Troy Wood whose name is on the board as the clear winner on 334 points.
Brazilian Deivid Silva and Australian Nikki Van Dijk took out the 2018 Vissla Sydney Surf Pro World Surf League (QS) 6,000 event at Manly on Sunday.
After a week of epic conditions at Sydney’s home of professional surfing, the final day was held in small testing conditions.
This did not detract from action as huge weekend crowds watched Silva take the victory of his career while Van Dijk took her second QS victory at Manly.
Shane Campbell had the best local results Australian qualifying series which has just finished. He scored a fighting 17th place at Manly, this coupled with his 25th at the Newcastle 6000 contest and a win at the Carve pro leaves him in second place on the Australia/Oceania rankings and 17th on the international rankings – a good start to the season.
After a good start to the new season Cronulla beaches have been assaulted with a fresh southerly blowing through the hood for the last three days.
There is a bit of swell around the 3 / 4 ft mark but its blown out and hard to find a clean face or a bank.
I took today’s pics yesterday afternoon at the Wall while there were some surfers in the water.
Swellnet predicts that there will be plenty of SE swell all week but these tricky winds will blow until the weekend-these local winds will ease later this week to become light and variable by Saturday, so there’ll be better surfing opportunities around this time as conditions improve.
It's been a busy week in Australian surfing with Mick Fanning announcing his retirement and the 2018 Australian Surfing Awards held last night.
The Australian surfing community gathered on the Gold Coast to honour 1993 Women’s World Champion Pauline Menczer who was inducted into the Australian Surfing Hall of Fame.
Menczer became the 40th inductee into the Hall of Fame and cements herself as one of surfing’s great individuals.
She overcame enormous odds, including lack of sponsorship and crippling rheumatoid arthritis, to build a superb pro surfing career, including an epic world title win.
She defied every possible female stereotype in the process, sustained by her ingrained surfing talent, courage, and a lethal sense of humour. In the process, she also earned the complete respect of every other surfer on tour.
Menczer’s induction was only one of a number of presentations as part of the 2018 Australian Surfing Awards.
But my favourite story that has just surfaced from the surfing jungle is that just two years after joining the International Surfing Association as the 98th Member Nation, the Sierra Leone Surfing Association (SLSA) has made great strides in the development of the sport in their country.
The SLSA has reached two important milestones at the end of 2017 by holding their first National Championship and delivering the first ISA Instructor Certification Course.
The National Championship took place in December and featured 38 competitors - all of whom delivered high quality performances that highlighted the marked growth in elite level surfing in the country since joining the ISA in 2016.
Four national champions were crowned across the Open, Women, Junior, and Grom divisions, including an impressive display of talent from the up-and-coming junior level surfers- and presented with the best trophies EVER.
