Full throttle on the Amanzi battlefronts
The spectacular Royal St Andrew’s Hotel Amanzi Challenge gets under way with much fanfare on Friday morning, kicking off 10 days of exciting sport events across the town.
Much of the focus will be on the thrilling water sports that will be battled out over the week and a half, with a number of championships taking place.
The events start off with the South African Bodyboarding Championships, which will be battled out at West Beach from Friday until Tuesday and will see some of the country’s best bodyboarding talent in action.
The festival will then end off with the exciting Thundercat Racing from next week Thursday to Sunday, where some cracking powerboating action will be on show.
Sandwiched between these two big events will be the very popular Port Alfred Classic, a World Surfing League (WSL) Qualifying Series (QS) 1000 event that is the second leg of the 2019 City Surf Series.
The QS1000 men’s and women’s divisions as well as the JQS1000 junior men’s and junior women’s events are sanctioned by the WSL Africa regional office.
Each competitor earns points based on their final position in the event and those points count towards the crowning of the annual WSL Africa champions.
This while the men’s and women’s events also count towards the international WSL QS rankings and the junior men’s and women’s events count towards the selection of the squad of four men and two women who represent the WSL Africa region at the annual WSL World Junior Championship in Australia every January.
Some of the top surfers in the country will thus be on show, including a few internationals, particularly on the women’s front where a large contingent of Japanese surfers are taking part.
East London junior surfers such as the superb rising star Zoe Steyn, SA women’s surfing champ, and Daniel Emslie, who will head in after triumphing in the Nelson Mandela Bay SAST contest in PE, will be in action.
In all a fantastic Amanzi Challenge festival is in store with something for everyone on show.