Well, the Irish team have been in Portugal now for the last few days, and spending plenty of time surfing the competition wave and getting to know it. It’s a really nice beach break, quite heavy with a very interesting put in on the high tide. So far there’s been boat breakages, paddle breakages, blood spilt, a dislocated shoulder for one of the oz ladies, broken ankle for a UK lady and much much fun - and the competition hasn’t even started yet!
Last night saw the opening ceremony and the first night of an 8 day beach festival. There was a huge firework display, open air concert on the beach, the two bands were followed by a cracker dj - we did hear that there was another dj on after that but we didn’t make it past the 5am mark to find out first hand. Luckily today is a non competition day, but tomorrow at 9am it all starts with the individual event. There are non stop heats from 9am until 7pm for the next week. We have two locations going as well as the rip curl short board open, pro kite’s world cup leg and the skim board world champs, so the beach is very full.
The set up for the multi water sport event is amazing. There are dozens of TV cameras getting incredible shots, which are then being feed to the numerous big screens, spa baths for competitors after heats, vip tents and access to the night time festivities for competitors, dozens of shops, bars and restaurants all set up on the beach just for the event.
But don’t worry all the funs bits are not distracting the team from the reason we are hear. There have been a number of changes this year, due to numbers and time constraints – notably, it is now a 2 wave scoring heat and not three, the heats are 14minute and not the usual 20min, and everything is sudden death. If you are not in the top 2 of each heat then the competitive surfing for you ends! People have travelled from all over the world to be here and it may all end in 14 minutes. In the team event four countries will be cut after round one, leaving 8, and then another four cut after round two, leaving a final of four countries.
We will update as much as we can so watch the site, and we are all looking forward to the start of the heats.
http://www.santacruzoceanspirit.org/index.html
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