Vodacom Cape Town Surfski Series: Big names on the podium

As summer season comes slowly to Cape Town, the canoeing scene turns its gaze to the ocean. The Lifesavers Club of Fish Hoek is responsible for organizing the Cape Town surfski series, sponsored by Vodacom, with races almost every two weeks in different spots around the area in both the Atlantic and Indic side. These races are a good prelude to the big event coming at the end of December, the Cape Point Challenge. Gradually, the best surfski paddlers will test themselves and the opponents getting ready for the big event .

In this occasion, the fourth race of the series (Seaforth Restaurant prix) was a nice fight between world champion Sean Rice, Dawid Mocke and Tom Schilperoort, but after the turn, in the downwind section (perfect conditions for it, in the video you can clearly see the great scenario with winds of about 25 knots), Rice showed his quality and claimed the win. Mocke and Schilperoort followed him in that order. 4th and 5th ​​were two young values as Kenny Rice and Craig Flanagan..

In women, very young participation, with victory for Kim van Gysen followed by Bianca Haw and Kirsten Flanagan, three names to keep in mind in the future of this discipline.

Jasper Mocke wins the Ohana Mana Cup of surfski in Sardinia (Italy)

Winner, Jasper Mocke

The brilliant bronze medalists at last Marathon World Championships in Rome, Jasper Mocke and Simon van Gysen (RSA), kept showing their current great shape last weekend at the Ohana Mana Cup of surfski held at the Island of Sardinia (Italy).

With a 38 km. downwind course along the southern coast of the island, about a hundred surfskis took the start on this 2012 edition. And, as it is usual, South Africans, with permission of the few Australian paddlers, claimed the main positions of the race. They put 5 paddlers into the top ten, claimed victory in the Women's race and showed Europeans again in their own field the superiority of southern hemisphere paddlers when it comes to surfski paddling.

Jasper Mocke and Simon van Gysen got the lead for the full length of the race, until finally the younger Mocke got some advantage facing the finish line, where he entered in first position (1h36'30") with 44 seconds over his marathon K2 partner, winner this spring of the Eurochallenge at Vilajoiosa (Spain).