There were tears of joy and probably a few of disappointment as the ISA World Para Surfing Championships went through a changing of the guard in chilly and challenging conditions at Pismo Beach in Central California last weekend.
On finals’ day [Sunday our time], 13 world champions were crowned on what organisers described as “a groundbreaking day of action in wild and woolly conditions”.
Looking at the livestream, I would have added cold and abysmal, but para (or adaptive) surfers are made of sterner stuff than the rest of us, as they prove each and every time they paddle out and defy the conventions of disability.
Canada’s Victoria Feige won her fourth gold medal in a row in women’s kneel to set herself apart and officially become the greatest of all time in women’s Para Surfing, but Australia’s Mark Mono Stewart just missed out on his fourth gold in the men’s kneel, after making a remarkable comeback from a disastrous first round. Mono will always be the GOAT of adaptive surfing to me, but we’ll come back to his Pismo in a minute.
Gold medals from Sarah Bettencourt (women’s prone) and Liv Stone (women’s stand) helped deliver defending champions Team USA an unprecedented third gold medal in the Team World Championship, with Bettencourt and Stone both winning their third World Titles in a row.
The seventh edition of the ISA Para Worlds marked a changing of the guard.
A total of seven first-time world champions were crowned and six of the overall gold medallists were teenagers.
Of the first-time winners, which included Casey Proud (Hawaii), Llywelyn Sponge Williams (Wales), Camilo Abdulo (Portugal) and Rafael Lueders (Brazil), Aleli Medina (Puerto Rico) was the youngest at 13, and also the first to win an ISA Para Surfing medal of any colour for her national team.
The Para Worlds is always full of feel-good stories but few are as heart-warming as that of Australia’s Emma Dieters.
Nearly two years after a surgery that up-ended her life, the 40-year-old from Sydney’s Northern Beaches won the women’s prone 2 division.
“I can’t even believe that’s happened,” she said on the beach.
“It’s a surreal feeling, and I’m really stoked.”
Emma had suffered from bad neck pain due to a bulging disc for years, and in February 2021 she decided to undertake spinal fusion surgery to help her become more mobile and pain-free.
But the surgery went horribly wrong and she became an incomplete quadriplegic at the C4 level. She spent five months in hospital and rehab and when she emerged she was determined to return to surfing.
With encouragement from fellow para surfer Sam Bloom, Emma entered her first adaptive competition in August, and finished second in the Australian Surf Championships.
And then she went one better on the biggest stage of all, producing two high-scoring waves of 8.33 and 8.93 in the final in California to win gold, with her two children watching from the beach and her husband her support person in the water.
Fellow Australian and former world champion Jocelyn Neumueller claimed the silver medal.
It was the fourth final in the men’s kneel for Wales’ Sponge Williams, across six years of competing, and this year’s win felt like redemption for the 27-year-old after an interference in the dying minutes of the 2021 final cost him the gold medal to Mono Stewart, who was a close second this time.
“From losing in the last three minutes last year to having it now, it’s overwhelming,” Sponge said. “The whole of para surfing is building and next month we find out if we go to the Paralympics. So it’s all changing, and we have new people coming on board. It’s going to be a fun few years.”
As I’ve noted in this space many times before, Mark Mono Stewart, the one-legged kneeboarder from Byron Bay is truly the GOAT of adaptive surfing, an inspirational human being whose contribution to surfing was recognised at the Surfing Australia Awards this year when he was made the inaugural Adaptive Surfer of the Year.
A year ago when he was on his way to winning his third world title at Pismo, Mono noticed a small but growing cyst on his chest.
A guy who spent a year in hospital as a teenager after losing his leg to cancer is pretty much afraid of nothing, so he didn’t even mention it when he came up to Noosa to surf last January’s run of swells with me, but it was the beginning of a long period of gruelling treatment of yet another cancer, from which he only just emerged in time for this year’s ISA title defence.
That didn’t work out exactly to plan, but Mono was unfazed, having racked up the tournament’s two highest wave scores, a 9.33 and an 8.9, after recovering from a shocker of a start.
The kid’s only 60! He’ll be back next year.
