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The cream rose to the top at the Volkswagen SA Open of Surfing presented by Hurley when Barbados surfer Chelsea Tuach won the Women’s Qualifying Series 3000 and South African Adin Masencamp won the Men’s QS 1000. The fourth City Surf Series event of five offered five days of great surfing for competitors and spectators alike.
It was a challenging Women’s Final for Chelsea Tuach and Vahine Fierro, with surfers having to wait a long time before finding waves with decent scoring potential. Tuach scored the best wave of the heat for a 5.50 and backed it up with a 3.93 for a total of 9.43. Fierro searched the line-up for better scores but could only get two waves in the 4-point range. Tuach, who came into the event ranked in the top 30, will leapfrog up the WSL Women’s QS leaderboard after posting her best result of the 2019 season.
Chelsea Tuach
Reigning WSL Africa champion Adin Masencamp breathed a sigh of relief when he won the Men’s QS 1000 against Australian Sheldon Simkus in the Men’s Final. Jake Elkington opted to play the waiting game in his Semifinal match-up with Simkus while the Australian kept moving and whipped out high performance maneuvers on every wave to build on his score and advance to the final. Disappointed with a strategy that didn’t pan out, Elkington was eliminated in equal 3rd place.
Adin Masencamp
The Junior Men’s Final was a stacked field with committed surfing from all four competitors. Eli Beukes seemed to have left the best for last, dominating the final from the start. Beukes impressed the judges with his speed and powerful turns to open his account with a 7.67. He stayed busy, looking for a decent back-up, and finally found it for a 6.83 to shut the door on his opponents.
Eli Beukes
Luke Thompson tried his best to find the right waves and managed to sneak into 2nd place before the buzzer. Luke Slijpen had been surfing with plenty of fire throughout the day but it didn’t seem to go his way in the final, finishing 3rd. The only international surfer, Lenni Jensen from Germany finished in 4th place.
Luke Slijpen
In the Junior Women’s Final, the powerful Australian, Piper Harrison, nabbed the win from Rachel Presti in the last few minutes.It was Presti who was leading for the majority of the heat, but Harrison caught a great right-hander, completing four maneuvers with speed, power and flow and getting the nod from the judges for a 7.17 shooting her into 1st place.
Piper Harrison
Kayla Nogueira surfed a clever heat in the Semifinals to progress as the only South African in the final, but in the end she couldn’t find the waves with the right scoring potential.
Rachel Presti
In the Women’s QS 3000, it was quite a surprise to see all the remaining Japanese surfers eliminated from the competition. This came at the hands of the Australians Isabella Nichols, Holly Wawn and Sophie McCulloch who all progressed to the Quarterfinals. Nichols scored the highest heat of the round with a total of 13.50.
Kirra Pinkerton
After being eliminated from the Junior competition, Kirra Pinkerton managed to hold on to a 2nd place behind Vahine Fierro. Pinkerton showed why she is the current World Junior Champion when she bagged an excellent 8.33, just enough to send Emily Nishimoto and Minami Nonaka home.
In the Men’s QS 1,000 event, Dylan Lightfoot continued his winning ways in a stacked all-South African heat with a two-wave total of 12.50. The slow conditions on offer made it crucial to find a decent back-up score, which heat runner-up Jake Elkington finding just enough while Koby Oberholzer and Matt McGillivray struggled and were eliminated.
Dylan Lightfoot
Photos by Ian Thurtell.
