GROMS SEARCHING FOR PERFORMANCE

It wasn’t that long ago, 2010 in fact, when a rampaging kid from Brazil blew the world away here on our own shores out at South Piha and won the ISA World Junior Championships with such commanding form that within ten minutes of a 30-minute final he had built such an unassailable lead that he started playing around, blowing the minds of all present with the best surfing ever witnessed on our shores. Fast forward 10 years that grom, by the name of Gabriel Medina, has cemented himself as one of the best surfers in the world and was crowned World Champion in 2014, but his input into the sport has grown far more than as an athlete. In January of this year Gabriel launched the ‘Instituto Gabriel Medina’ with the support of his sponsors, a facility created to develop athletes and surfing champions, but also promote a healthy lifestyle and academic studies. And even better the facility is located on the beach front of Maresias Beach. By way of winning the NZ Gromsearch final two of our top junior surfers, Caleb Cutmore and Elin Tawharu found themselves jet setting across the globe to compete in the Rip Curl World GromSearch Final in Medinas home town of Maresias, where they not only got to rub shoulders with the man himself, but they each competed against the best eight groms from around the world and were put through their paces at Medinas Institute. We caught up with Waikato grom Caleb to pick his thoughts on the experience. “Making our way to Brazil meant a series of super long flights, but once we arrived we felt super welcome and were picked up by the local Rip Curl crew. It was very special and a huge honour for me to attend such an event, and to meet a guy like Gabriel Medina and to get to see and experience what he’s doing for the kids and the sport back in Brazil was a massive eye opener. Although Medina is like a superstar and one of my idols he was really approachable and seemed like a great guy. For him to host that comp and make himself available for us groms from all around the world when he has such a busy schedule himself, shows that he is passionate about the success of surfing as a sport and giving back. I was privileged to surf with him and that was mind blowing! I just sat back and was in awe at the things he could do.” While the main purpose of the trip for both Caleb and Elin was to compete in the World GromSearch Final, Caleb was super encouraged from what he saw as to the standard of the rest of the world in comparison to our surfers back home. “I was really surprised to see that NZ is not too far behind at all. I think America and Australia were the standouts, it was pretty tight between us other countries, we just need to stick at it and attend the best competitions to grow.” As part of the trip the groms had the opportunity to spend some time training under expert tutelage at the Medina Institute, where they were shown the importance of being prepared under the guidance of Medina’s personal coach and getting to witness first-hand the training processes of those that attend the Institute. “We were shown how to warm up and prepare the body for peak performance in the surf, once we fired up the body we went across the road and simulated some heat surfing. To see how they train over there was an eye opener, while they are working on the physical and mental strength, they are also surfing heats and training every single day again and again and they were all so strong competitively. By the time a competition comes around they have surfed hundreds of heats while back home we may not have surfed a heat for months. That’s the one thing I will take most from the trip just to become more organised and prepare better.”