Luke Thompson produced a fine performance for Team SA over solid overhead waves on day four of the ISA World Junior Surfing Championship at Huntington Beach, California.
Competing in the U16 boys Repecharge round two, the 14-year-old from Durban found the best waves in his heat and rode them with power, speed and flow to earn scores of 7.33 and 7.93 – each out of 10 – on his two counting rides. His heat total of 15.26 was the second-highest score of the day.
Not far behind Thompson was fellow Durbanite Tide-Lee Ireland, who also revelled in the conditions and recorded a heat-winning tally of 14.17 in his U16 boys Repecharge match-up. They both advanced to the next round in the world’s biggest junior surfing event.
Kayla Nogueira from Umhlanga kept her status on track in the U16 girls main event stream with a gutsy runner-up finish, placing behind heat winner Shino Matsuda of Japan. Nogueira’s scores of 6.0 and 4.73 left her less than half a point behind Matsuda as the pair advanced to round three.
Earlier, Ceara Knight from Scarborough fell short of second place in her U16 girls heat, finishing a minuscule 0.17 of a point behind Brie Bennett of New Zealand in third place, which dropped the Capetonian into the Repecharge rounds. Tayla de Coning from East London had no problem in winning her first Repecharge round heat in the U18 girls division, and will be up against opponents from Brazil, England and Germany in round two.
Bryce du Preez posted comfortable victories in both his U18 boys Repercharge round one and two heats, racking up totals of 9.67 and 12.54, which left his nearest rivals needing to record the highest single ride score in each heat to overtake him.
The team’s only setback came in the last heat to run in the U18 boys Repecharge round two, where Angelo Faulkner from Jeffreys Bay accumulated scores of 5.53 and 3.60 but was left needing a 4.92 to climb into second place, when the siren sounded to end the frenzied 15-minute encounter. Faulkner is the first Team SA member to be eliminated from the event, placing 65th overall in the U18 boys division and contributing 160 points to the team’s points tally.
Team SA currently occupies 11th place out of the 44 nations in the provisional rankings, with the top 10 teams still having all 12 of their team members in contention.
Wednesday’s schedule included the main event round three for all four divisions on the main podium, where South Africa’s Luke Slijpen, Zoe Steyn, Mitch du Preez and Kayla Nogueira, were in action. The second podium ran the Repecharge stream heats including the balance of the U18 boys round two, followed by the U18 and U16 girls round two and finished the day with the U18 boys round three.
Photo: Thompson in action on Day 4. Supplied by ISA / Reed