South Africans rule at the Eurochallenge

Left to right: Sean Rice, Dawid Mocke and Jasper Mocke

This past weekend was held at Villajoyosa (Spain) the Eurochallenge 2013 of surfski. Crowded field, but it was missed some more foreign participation, which in previous years had been abundant. Anyway, that foreign participation was of very high quality, as evidenced by the podium conquered by South African stars, all of them from Fish Hoek, Sean Rice, Dawid Mocke and Jasper Mocke.

That was the order in both races, the downwind North course on Saturday, of the two prepared depending on weather conditions. 20 kilometer run in line along the coast heading Southwest and finishing in Villajoyosa. And the classical race on Sunday.

Sean Rice, recent winner of the South African trials, both in 1,000 meters and surfski, stood alone doing much of the race at the downwind. As recognized after by Dawid Mocke, trying to follow him was a ticket to get sore muscles. Rice got a three minutes advantage over Dawid Mocke and five over Jasper. Walter Bouzán came in fourth place very closed to Jasper Mocke and heading the European field, where the Dutchman Joep van Bakel was fifth and Daniel Sanchez Viloria, who arrived as second Spanish, added himself to Walter in the list of our representatives in the Surfski World Championships to be held this coming July in Portugal.

The Spaniard Luis Amado Pérez was the first U23 and with Carlos Cerezo, second, also earned that place for World Champs. Craig Flanagan (RSA) was the first junior, while British Chloe Bunnett claimed victory in Women SS1.

In the second race, held on Sunday under the classical format (starting and finishing at the same place on a course with turns), the 18 kilometers finished with the same podium and in the same order as the day before, although the distances between the three South Africans were this time of just seconds. The fourth place went now for Kiko Vega, about two minutes of the Fish Hoek triplet. Joep van Bakel and Daniel S. Viloria repeated their positions, while Walter Bouzan fell down to seventh place.

Chloe Bunnett and Craig Flanagan repeated victory in their categories, but U23 swapped in the top two positions, this time with Carlos Cerezo gettting ahead of Luis Amado Perez and overtaking him for just some seconds in the overall to claim the Eurochallenge U23 title.

You can see the results in full at this link.