There was jubilation on Grand Plage beach in Biarritz on Saturday as host nation France secured an historic first-ever team gold medal on the penultimate day of the 2017 ISA World Surfing Games.
Following the unprecedented individual gold and silver medal results for Pauline Ado and Johanne Defay in the women’s event last Monday, France took an unassailable lead in the team rankings when their top two men, Jeremy Flores and Joan Duru, advanced to the semi-finals in Saturday’s action.
The South African team, who went into the penultimate day in seventh place on the provisional standings, had their hopes dashed of a team medal to add to Bianca Buitendag’s copper in the women’s event when Brandon Benjamin (Steenberg) and Shane Sykes (Salt Rock) failed to progress beyond their respective Round 3 match-ups.
Slipping to 11th place among the record 47 nations participating in this year’s ISA World Surfing Games going into Sunday’s final day, the same position they finished at the corresponding event in Costa Rica last year, the 2017 South African team still have a chance of moving up one place to 10th.
That rests on the final placing of Morocco’s Yassine Ramdani, who will compete in Sunday’s men’s semi-finals, but will have to earn either the gold or silver medal in the men’s final to ensure that his team becomes the first African nation to finish ahead of South Africa at an international surfing event.
Sunday’s action was scheduled to start at 9.30am with the men’s semi-finals, followed by the final, and then the ISA Aloha Cup semis and final before the awards ceremony.
The ISA Aloha Cup is a team relay event that includes the top eight teams from the previous World Surfing Games. Three men and one woman on each team surf in the relay, summing up the wave totals from each athlete in a 40 minute heat. The team that ends with the highest overall heat total wins.
Picture of Sykes in Saturday action courtesy of ISA/Evans