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South Africa is guaranteed five medals at the ISA World Masters Surfing Championship with the colour of those medals to be determined today, the seventh and final day of the event being held at Santa Catalina on the Pacific coast of Panama.
Team SA slipped to second place behind arch rivals Australia in the standings on Friday, but the race for the team gold medal is really close, with Brazil also in contention in third place.
After yesterday’s action in excellent two metre waves, each of the five age divisions has six surfers remaining, two of them already in the Grand final and the other four in the final repecharge heat.
Australia heads the standings with seven of their eight team members still in contention for individual honours, one having already qualified for a Grand Final and six in their respective repecharge rounds.
However, while South Africa has one less surfer still in contention after Wayne Monk (East London) and Rob Moore-Boyle (Durban) were eliminated yesterday, four of the six South Africans are already in their respective Grand Finals and just two are in the final repecharge round.
Brazil has five competitors remaining, one in a Grand Final and four in the repecharges.
Andrew Banks (Port Shepstone) qualified for the Masters Grand final by winning his Round 4 qualifying stream heat with an outstanding heat total of 17.16 comprising rides of 7.83 and 9.33 out of 10.
“I’m extremely relieved because I did not want to get relegated to the repecharge rounds,” said Banks. “In 2008 in Peru I made it all the way to the final of the repecharge and unfortunately got knocked out there. I’m happy to be in the Grand final in Panama.”
Qayne Monk placed third in his Round 4 repecharge heat to finish 9th overall in the Masters division, contributing 1 000 points towards SA’s team total.
In the Grand Masters, Andre Malherbe (East London) has battled his way through four repecharge rounds and needs to finish first or second today in order to reach the Grand final and a place on the podium.
Rob Moore-Boyle reached Grand Masters repecharge Round 5 before bowing out in third place, finishing 7th overall with 1 110 team points.
David Malherbe (Coffee Bay) is guaranteed of a Kahunas medal after placing second in the final heat of the qualifying stream, while Marc Wright showed his determination to defend his ISA World title by dominating his repecharge Round 5 heat, earning a heat total of 16.36 out of 20, and will be going all out to join Malherbe in the Grand final today.
The Women Masters division saw defending world champion Heather Clark (Port Shepstone) using her strong backhand attack to score the highest single wave (9.77) and combined score (19.10) of the entire tournament.
“My coach (1978 ISA World champion Ant Brodowicz from Margate) told me that I needed to go out there and just have fun, so that is what I did and it worked well,” said Clark. “There was a bit of hassling out there, I guess that everybody wants to win really bad and the competition gets exciting.”
Chris Knutsen (Durban), the defending Grand Kahunas world champion, will get the chance to add to the two gold medals he won in Puerto Rico in 2007 (in the Kahunas division) and Peru in 2008. Knutsen placed second in his qualifying stream final heat to qualify for today’s Grand final.
Out of the 107 surfers from 21 nations that started the competition, five of the remaining 30 will be crowned World Champion and either South Africa, Australia or Brazil will win the gold in the overall team standings.
Schedule for Saturday 4 September (South Africans in Brackets)
LOCAL SURFERS SPECIAL HEAT
FINAL REPERCHARGE GRAND KAHUNA
FINAL REPERCHARGE WOMEN MASTERS
FINAL REPERCHARGE GRAND MASTERS (Andre Malherbe)
FINAL REPERCHARGE KAHUNAS (Marc Wright)
FINAL REPERCHARGE MASTERS
GRAND FINAL GRAND KAHUNAS (Chris Knutsen)
GRAND FINAL WOMEN MASTERS (Heather Clark)
GRAND FINAL GRAND MASTERS
GRAND FINAL KAHUNAS (David Malherbe)
GRAND FINAL MASTERS (Andrew Banks)
PANAMA ISA MASTERS CLOSING CEREMONY
Standings after six days of competition
1- AUSTRALIA
2- SOUTH AFRICA
3- BRAZIL
4- PUERTO RICO
5- PERU
6- COSTA RICA
7- PANAMA
8- FRANCIA
9- VENEZUELA
10- ARGENTINA
11- MEXICO
12- ITALIA
13- URUGUAY
14- DOMINICAN REPUBLIC
15- JAMAICA
16- NEW ZEALAND
17- GUATEMALA
18- TAHITI
19- EL SALVADOR
20- GERMANY
21- IRELAND
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