GREAT DAY OF SURFING AT BILLABONG JUNIOR SERIES PRESENTED BY ALL ABOARD TRAVEL DAY 1

Pollock Beach – amazing waves greeted the contestants at the Billabong Junior Series presented by All Aboard Travel on day one of their first event in the four part series, and the surfers were over the moon to get such good conditions for an event. “It’s perfect out there,” said Nelson Mandela Bay surfer Dillon Hendricks after winning his heat in the excellent surfing conditions. “It’s the perfect day for Pipe.”

It has been a while since big hitting surf events have been held in Port Elizabeth, and this event is just the start of a movement of new events back to the city. After this event the inaugural City Surf Series – a series of five professional surfing events set to take place at five major coastal hubs throughout the year – kicks off in Port Elizabeth. The Nelson Mandela Bay Surf Pro is a World Surf League (WSL) World Qualifying Series (WQS) event that offers our surfer prize money and international points that could see our local surfers en route to qualifying for the prestigious Championship Tour. This tour is the elite tour, with Jordy Smith t number 2 in the world, and who held their event the Corona JBay Open every year in July down at Supertubes in JBay.

All eyes however, are currently on the Billabong Junior Series, and it is a series that has been in place for 20 years, with 2017 being that 20^th year anniversary. The Billabong Junior Series is the longest running junior series in the world and is currently looking like one of the biggest. Billabong South Africa Marketing manager Chad D’Arcy from JBay is obviously very proud of the fact that Billabong has supported this junior series for so long and has thus nurtured so many of the country’s top surfers into elevated positions on various world tours. “Obviously we are very proud of our legacy and the fat that we have stuck with the junior series through thick and thin,” said D’Arcy. “We at Billabong South Africa have always had the belief that the future of our sport lies with the junior surfers, so chose to embark on a journey with the juniors of our country and stick with it.”

The most important thing for a good surf event however, is good surf, and it’s as if Nelson Mandela Bay went ahead and said, “Told you so – we have great waves here and look what you’ve been missing.” It was a rare day of sublime perfection where the waves were of optimum size for the juniors, the sand banks were perfectly shaped, and the wind forgot to blow for most of the day. These conditions saw the surfers step up to the plate in their bid to advance to final day of surfing tomorrow, and to impress the judges and the assembled surf industry stalwarts watching on to see who the next crop of superstars are going to be. Angelo Faulkner from JBay was a heat winner in the highly competitive U16 Boys division and she showed that there is no room for complacency in surfing contests.  “My heat went pretty well, but I struggled a little bit at first, and only at the end did I pick up some good ones and get into first place,” said Angelo. With the shifting beach break peaks of Pollock beach quite tricky for many of the surfers, Angelo was well at home here, finding the conditions very similar to where he surfs every day of my life.

“My home break is Kitchen Windows in JBay, and this wave is pretty similar to Kitchens,” reckoned Angelo. “We surf Kitchens every day, so this is like my homebreak and I felt very comfortable out here.

Angelo is focused on the U16 Boys title for the year, but knows that his work is cut out for him. “All the U16 boys are surfing pretty well,” reckoned Angelo, adding, “but in the end there’s only one winner.”