By Phil Jarratt
REGARDLESS of what the surfing purists may think and hope, the stand up paddle brigade is here to stay.
No clearer evidence was needed than last weekend’s amazing finish to the ISA World SUP Championships in Fiji.
After judging the men’s and women’s finals held in powerful double-overhead Cloudbreak, Zippy Pearson, long-time head judge at the Laguna Real Estate Noosa Festival of Surfing, said in an email: “Just back to the hotel from an epic day of SUP surfing out at Cloudbreak. It will go down in history as one of the best days ever in ISA competition.”
That’s a big call from a guy who is not only one of the world’s most respected surfing judges, but is also a hell of a competitor.
I caught a bit of the men’s final on the webcast, and have just been through the vast photo gallery on the ISA site, and it’s hard to disagree with Zip.
The sweepers simply shredded a challenging break on a very challenging day.
Hawaii’s Zane Schweitzer and Australia’s Shakira Westdorp emerged victorious in the men’s and women’s surfing finals and gave their teams a major boost in the team rankings, with Team Australia hanging onto its lead from Team France through Sunday’s paddle finals, thanks in large part to Michael Booth taking out the men’s SUP distance race, and Matt Poole and Noosa’s Lachie Lansdown going one and two in the prone paddle.
Hawaii’s Schweitzer took the short route to the grand final, never falling from the main event.
In the dying minutes, Schweitzer pulled into a gaping barrel, flew out and finished the wave with solid turns all the way to the inside as the crowd on boats in the channel erupted in cheers. The nine-point ride gave him the world title over team-mate Mo Freitas.
In an equally exciting women’s final, Gold Coaster Shakira Westdorp, a multiple SUP champion at the Noosa Festival who had to fight through the repecharge round in Fiji, finally claimed gold in her fourth ISA world title final.
“It’s a dream come true,” beamed Westdorp. “I’ve won two silver medals and I finally won the gold, so I am so stoked.”
Here comes the world!
With almost half of the available competitor entries filled three months out, the 2017 Laguna Real Estate Noosa Festival of Surfing looks like being the most international event yet.
As per usual, a huge contingent of Californians and Hawaiians has already signed up, but the big surprise so far is the land of the rising sun.
Of 21 competitors signed for the Men’s Open Amateur, nine are from Japan.
The Noosa Festival has always had great support from the Japanese surfing community, and their polite, fun-loving representatives have made many friends here, but this year it seems like some one is really beating the drum on Noosa’s behalf.
Another interesting early statistic: of 15 entries so far in the Women’s Pro, 10 are internationals, seven of them from Hawaii.
Oh, and we have two surfers from mainland China and one from Argentina in the mix.
The SUP community has also been stirred into early action by the indefatigable Paul Jones, with an amazing 72 entrants already in the racing divisions.
If you want to know more about the festival, visit noosafestivalofsurfing.com or check out the Facebook page. Bring on next March!
Thanks
For those of you with limited knowledge of American culture, today is Thanksgiving Day, and all over the Disunited States, one in two people will be giving thanks that there are still a few weeks to go before President Trump takes over the White House.
The rest, I suppose, will be giving thanks for the wall that will soon prevent their underpaid gardeners and nannies from going home to see family.
We’ll be celebrating tonight with friends who endured 30 years in America before seeing the light and moving to Noosa, and I’m sure it will be a joyous occasion despite the politics, with a traditional feast to die for.
And I’m sure we’ll find plenty to be thankful for.
We once celebrated Thanksgiving with friends in the California high desert, and I remember being enchanted by the traditional ritual of moving from person to person around the table, before the roast turkey was served, and asking each what they had to be thankful for.
Some of the guests actually had to pause for thought, which was odd since no one was ill or penniless.
But I worked out that it was because they all had such an embarrassment of riches to choose from.
Being bereft of both enormous wealth and inclination toward organised religion, I had no such problem.
When it comes to giving thanks, you can’t beat the big three – family, friends and health.
That’s what I’ll be silently thankful for tonight, as I salivate over the turkey.
