Second national title for Ellen
A Grade 11 pupil from Outeniqua High School, Ellen Strydom (17), has claimed her second national title within six months in two completely different sporting codes.
Strydom won the first title in early November 2023 at the SA Surfski Championships in East London, where she claimed the u.16 girls national title over a distance of 22km.
Open Ocean Surfski Racing is an extreme sport in the sense that competitors often paddle in very windy and rough sea conditions in a "down wind" direction. Reaching speeds of 25km/h and more, paddlers are sometimes a few kilometres off shore in a 6,5m long surfski, making it not a sport for the faint-hearted. She is a member of the Outeniqua Canoe Club with whom she trains mostly in a squad.
Strydom also won the senior ladies Malibu board title on 23 March at the DHL South Africa Surf Lifesaving Championships in Durban. The international sport of
Surf LifeSaving has its origin in Australia where competitors use similar craft and the skill that would be used by life savers in performing rescue and lifesaving duties on our beaches. She is also an active member of the Outeniqua lifesaving club and worked at Victoria Bay as lifeguard over the past season.
"Winning the board race was a big one and although I have been training extremely hard, I did not expect this result," Strydom said. "I was up against the best in the country from the three age groups that are eligible to compete in this category and some members of the current national team. It
was a really tight race over the first 400m and literally came down to the last wave in the last 30m of the race. It is the race that most girls come to win and claim that gold."
She was selected to represent the Western Cape lifesaving team at the South African Interprovincial Championship that will take place in Gqweberha on 4 and 5 May.
Strydom also competed in one of the most gruelling Surfski races on the planet, the Cape Point Challenge, with her father, also an avid paddler, where competitors paddle from the Atlantic side of Cape Point around to Fish Hoek in False Bay over a distance of 56km.
Next up for Ellen is the Inaugural Freedom Paddle around Robben Island on 27 April.