De Vries heads Down Under
Local talent is super confident as he heads off to Sydney for the start of his 2019 campaign
QUALIFICATION. It’s the one thing that separates good surfers from great surfers on the World Surf League. Surfers with world title aspirations must qualify through the fiercely competitive Qualifying Series before graduating to the Championship Tour where world champions are crowned and celebrated.
For Durbanite Beyrick de Vries it’s been a tough ten-year slog to qualify for the Championship Tour. At age 16 the red-hot rookie from Umhlanga Rocks set about realising his dreams of competing with the best surfers in the world. While de Vries has come close to qualifying on several occasions his dream to qualify is still very much alive as he prepares to kickstart his 2019 WSL campaign.
On Tuesday De Vries will be armed with a brand-new quiver of Channel Islands Surfboards and jet off Down Under for the Australian leg of the world tour. Despite the Australian season opening up with minor QS events over the past six weeks, it’s the big-ticket events, the ‘QS6000’ events that he has set his sights on, in and around Sydney.
First up is the Burton Automotive Pro in Newcastle, followed by the Vissla Sydney Surf Pro, the same event that eleven times world champ Kelly Slater has selected as his season opener.
With Slater headlining the event De Vries is also well aware of the fierce competition he faces when the world’s best surfers descend on the Australian shores in peak condition.
“With everyone training hard in the off-season the pro surfers arrive super fit and everyone believes that this is their year,” said de Vries earlier this week.
“You just have to believe that you have been training hard enough and that you want it more than they do. You have 144 surfers believing that they should win the event, so you have to have that self-belief and know that all the hard work you put in will make the difference.”
Last year de Vries had a solid start to the 2018 season, with back-to-back ninth places in Newcastle and Sydney giving him the perfect platform to launch a serious qualifying bid. But it was not to be as his results faded mid-season.
Questioned as to where it all went wrong, de Vries admitted that he felt that he was too intense, too early in the season, so much so that that he lost momentum by not having a good balance between the competitive side and the free surfing side for pure enjoyment.
Despite the slump, a strong finish in Hawaii at the HIC Pro at the fabled Sunset Beach towards the end of the year rekindled the fire within for him to have another go at the grueling QS.
“The Hawaiian season felt like a slingshot that catapulted me in many ways, from finances to everyone’s belief in me. People that hadn’t been in touch with me for a long time were like… yes! This is what we were believing in you, right from the beginning.”
With renewed confidence and belief in himself de Vries feels that this year could be the year it all comes together.