BEACH BATTLE
GOLD Coast powerhouses Northcliffe and Currumbin are locked in battle for World Championship Inter-Club supremacy on the shores of Adelaide’s Glenelg Beach.
The clubs went neck and neck in the pool over three days with honours shared and it looks destined to be the same story on the beach.
Northcliffe, meanwhile, started their ocean assault without five-time Coolangatta ironman champion Caine Eckstein (virus), joining his brother Shannon on the sidelines.
It left the chase up to the club’s girl power and they didn’t let the team down – with club coach Naomi Flood coming out of semi-retirement to replace injured Harriet Brown.
Flood finished second to fellow Olympian Alyssa Bull (Alexandra Headland) in a classic world championship ski race final she had won five times before. In a show of depth Flood’s pupils also impressed: Georgia Laird (third), Danielle McKenzie (fourth) and Georgia Miller (12th).
Flood also backed up to play a carrier’s role with Laird in the gold medal-winning rescue tube rescue team with patient Margaux Fabre and rescuer Carina Doyle.
However anything the Northcliffe girls could do the Currumbin boys could match.
The vastly improved Vikings, under Michael King and Kurt Wilson, finished the day with two gold and one silver as well as a determined bronze to Chelsea Gillett and Kirsty Hardstaff in the women’s board rescue.
Board paddler Corey Fletcher, one of the Vikings’ unsung heroes and a member of the club’s victorious Australian championship-winning taplin relay team, was in the thick of the medal hunt.
Fletcher chased eventual world champion Bevilacqua all the way home to take out silver in a helter-skelter open board race final.
Meanwhile Kurrawa also took their moment to shine by claiming what is believed to be the club’s first back-toback gold in the men’s and women’s beach relays before the club’s Nutri-Grain ironman champion Bevilacqua won his first world board race title.