World Masters Champions will be defined tomorrow
Today South Africa won the ISA Nations Cup
ISA World Master Surfing Championships
January 27th, 2007
Rincón, Puerto Rico
Perfect one to two feet waves didn’t meet the organizers’ expectations. The three heats that were planned for today were postponed at the Porta del Sol ISA World Masters Surfing Championships, therefore, it’s been decided to have all the remaining rounds tomorrow, when a powerful swell from the northwest will be hitting Puerto Rico´s coast.
The ISA Nations Cup, team competition -Tag Team- took place. This event didn’t count for the teams’ final scoring but it was a good way to show the surfing level the participating teams have.
South Africa, which is up to now second on the teams’ ranking, beat Puerto Rico which got second place this time, but it’s in the first place on the nations’ ranking. France got third.
Tomorrow, the new World Masters Surf Champions will be defined, along with the winning nation. Two countries are fighting head-to-head for the first place: Puerto Rico and South Africa. The local team has still all its competitors in the championship, whereas South Africa has lost one of its athletes but it has the advantage of having four surfers waiting in the three divisions big finals.
Angel “the Doctor” Rodriguez, Puerto Rico Team Manager, gave his opinion about his team’s situation: “We’ve just had a meeting with all the team members and have established that in order to make it through, all of them have to make at least an average of 7.5 points on each wave to qualify. We are making the adjustments that are needed for them to score high. We have a tough competition; both Tahiti and South Africa are hard nations to beat.”
“I think that if we make it to the finals with 50% of our team, we can stand in the first or the second place because we would accumulate a lot of points there. We are feeling good and our team is strong, as an example we have a Juan Ashton that is good at any conditions, and if the waves are big, Alberto Licha is always a favorite. Up to now I feel extremely grateful and satisfied with the team performance, and from now on all depends on God who can give us the right waves, and let the best team win,” added Rodriguez, very pleased with his team performance.
On the other hand, Brendan Callaghan, South African Team Manager, said: “We’ve come here with a “Dream Team”, we’ve certainly trained hard for this event. Having four surfers on the final is an achieved goal to us. I think that Puerto Rico and the other teams have still a lot of work to do, nevertheless Puerto Rico along with Tahiti are right now our biggest threat, both teams have very good surfers, although they have to make it through two more heats to get into the big final. The situation could have different endings. We’ve already done the hard work and obtained the goals we set for ourselves and we’re confident we can continue performing well for what’s left of the contest and hopefully get the nations’ title.”
Tomorrow at 8:00 AM –local time-, the nine remaining heats will take place to define who the Masters World Champions are in the three different divisions: Masters, Grand Masters and Kahunas. The fifth and sixth round of the repercharge and the finals will take place.
ISA Porta del Sol World Masters Surfing Championship is possible thanks to the support of the Tourism Company of Puerto Rico, Heineken, Villa Cofresi, Ricoh, Entertainments and Sports Department, El Nuevo Día, Nido companies, Sprite, 103.7 FM, One Link Communications, Choice Cable TV, Liberty Internet, rad!, The Room and Rincon of the Seas. It is organized by the Puerto Rico Surf Federation and supervised by the International Surfing Association.
About International Surfing Association (ISA)
The International Surfing Association (ISA) is recognized by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) as the World Governing Authority for surfing, bodyboarding and surfriding. It was originally founded as the International Surfing Federation in 1964 and has been running World Championships since 1964 and the Junior World Championships since 1980.
ISA membership includes the surfing National Governing Bodies (NGBs) of over 50 countries on six continents. Its headquarters are located in San Diego, California. It is presided by Fernando Aguerre, first elected in 1994 in Rio, and re-elected five times since. The ISA's four Vice Presidents are Robin de Kock (South Africa), Alan Atkins (Australia), Maile Aguerre (Hawaii) and Mike Gerard (USA).
Pablo Zanocchi –on site at Puerto Rico-
ISA WMSC Media Manager
pablo@isasurf.org
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