19 June 2019, Bali – Indonesia: The Men’s Shortboard Division saw first action on Day 1 of the REnextop Asian Surfing Tour’s first stop of 2019 at Padma Beach in Bali today, where the solid 4-6 foot beachbreak offered up both challenges and opportunities for the 58-man strong field of surfers from 10 countries (Australia, Brazil, France, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Taiwan, Thailand, Russia and the USA).
After a traditional Balinese ceremony to ask the gods to bless the event and its participants, the action got underway at just after 8 am in mid tide conditions. It was expected that the swell would be increasing throughout the day, with several swell forecasts showing up to 8-10 foot wave conditions, which would make it tough going for the other divisions (Men’s and Women’s Longboard, and Women’s Shortboard), so the call was made for the Men’s Shortboard Division to tackle the sizeable surf today.
It was clean and glassy in the early going, and then the trade winds kicked in around at midday, which didn’t affect the conditions adversely. The surfers were forced to duckdive a lot of large closeouts sets, but did find scoring opportunities on the medium to smaller waves. Local knowledge did play a significant role in advancing into the next round as evidence by the fact that all but two heats of the 16 in the first round were won by Kuta/Legian/Padma beach locals. The exception were two Australian expats, Reef Doig and Jay Duck, who have called Bali home enough years to be considered locals as well.
Posting the day’s top single wave score and combined heat score was Padma Boy Demian Amar, whose 7.50 wave (out of a possible 10 points) was earned on a left hander which he blasted apart from the peak until the sand on his forehand. He added a 6.93 to rack up a total score of 14.43 to easily win the heat, his closest rival needing an almost perfect score of 9.37 to best him.
Four heats of Round 2 were run as well, but the action was then called off as the low tide conditions were offering even less opportunities. Round 1 heat winners Radiya Rondi, Tenshi Ishii, and Rio Waida also won their Round 2 heats to advance into Round 3, and the remainder of Round 2 is expected to run tomorrow morning at around 7:30 am.
After the horn blew the conclusion of the day’s activity, Head Judge Keenan Roxburgh was asked to evaluate the day considering the wave conditions: “We managed to surf through a fickle part of the low tide conditions here at the end to finish for the day, but I was actually surprised that the high tide offered some great scoring potential, considering the forecast we were looking at last night. Our highest wave score was a 7.50, so we didn’t quite find and excellent scores, but that’s not to say that the boys didn’t put on a really strong show today. I was really pleased that we saw a good variety today, with left and rights, only one barrel, but big sections out the back, a few little airs, but just good solid surfing. Looking forward to what tomorrow will bring!”
Check all the results from today on Live Heats at https://www.liveheats.com/events/1803
The RAST #1 event was live webcast today but unfortunately the internet instability didn’t allow the highest quality…hopefully that will be resolved tomorrow and you can tune in to https://www.facebook.com/REnextopRAST to see all the action.
Tomorrow will likely continue with the remainder of the Men’s Round 2 starting at 7:30 am, and on into Round 3..but as usual it all depends upon the conditions.
RAST #1 is sponsored by REnextop Entertainment, REnex, M-GRAPH, WWW.CHTWM.COM, Sinaloa, Ibis Styles, and Carver, and supported by the ASC, the PSOI and the Padma Boys
_________________________________________________________________________________________________
About the REnextop Asian Surfing Tour
Through this series of competitions, REnextop will strengthen the integration of China’s surfing community with the international surfing world to provide more opportunities, communication avenues and interactions. Surfers from various countries in the Asia-Pacific region including Japan, Korea, Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia and Taiwan are invited to compete in these events.
REnextop is Asia’s first platform dedicated to helping extreme sportsmen and independent athletes to realize their dreams, and surfing is one of the most important extreme sports in REnextop. China’s top woman longboarder Monica Guo and top men’s longboarder TZ, are high-level surfers that are sponsored by the platform. Now they have become independent professional athletes traveling to surf and compete in the Asia Pacific region, setting an example for other Chinese surfers to follow and realize their dreams.
Find out more about REnextop at:
www.renextop.com
https://www.instagram.com/renextop/
https://www.facebook.com/REnextop-Entertainment
About the Asian Surf Cooperative
he Asian Surf Cooperative is a professional surfing organization with 14 years of experience in the organizing, managing and supporting surfing events around the Asian region, from local boardriders club competitions to WSL World Championship Tour events.
The Asian Surf Cooperative provides event management, live scoring, ISA certified judges, contest directors, digital photography and videography, event media packages, rankings, media coverage and distribution, and also assists the ISA in organizing Surf and SUP Instructor and International Judging courses.
From local grassroots boardriders and grommet (junior) events to specialty and WCT events, the ASC’s purpose and goal remains the same: To grow the sport of surfing in the Asian region by offering reliable and consistent resources and assistance to both small and large organizations who are helping to make Asia’s surfing athlete’s dreams come true.
www.asiansurf.co
https://www.facebook.com/asiansurfco/
https://www.instagram.com/asiansurfco/