Bianca on the bubble
Buitendag needs career-best results in Europe to requalify
Paul Botha
BIANCA Buitendag, the country’s top female surfer, is hovering on the requalification “bubble” heading into the European leg of the Women’s Championship Tour and needs to produce her career-best results at the events in Portugal and France to retain her spot among the world’s top 17 female surfers.
The 23-year-old from Victoria Bay in the southern Cape, who ended last season ranked a career-high fourth in the world after making the final of three events, has reached just one semi-final and one quarter-final this year, leaving her 12th in the rankings with seven of the 10 events completed.
Only the top 10 on the yearend leader board automatically qualify for the following year’s tour, along with the top six from the Qualifying Series rankings, where Buitendag is ranked 177th after only competing in one event.
Her past results in the Cascais Women’s Pro, which starts in Portugal today and runs until October 2, are two fifthplace finishes and a ninth.
She has placed 13th in each of the three stagings of the France Pro that she has contested since her debut on the top tour in 2013.
This means the South African will be under pressure to deliver in every heat that she contests in the European beach breaks.
At 1.87m, Buitendag is the tallest woman among the top 17 and has recorded many of her best results when the waves were overhead. That may be her saving grace because the venue for the season-ending Maui Women’s Pro is Honolua Bay in Hawaii, where Buitendag has posted a third and two fifth-place finishes.
Watch her progress during the final three events of the year at www.worldsurfleague. com. BEYRICK de Vries (uMhlanga) and Michael February (Kommetjie) will also be in action in Portugal this coming week in the Cascais Pro, the third of five top-rated QS 10 000 events on the schedule. It will run alongside the women’s tour event.
February, ranked 35th after his excellent semi-final result in the Azores two weeks ago, is in the first heat in the 114-man field. De Vries, ranked 27th, has been seeded directly into round two.
Both will be keen to accumulate as many points as possible here before the last two QS 10 000 events in Hawaii, where the experienced local contenders and a slew of the world’s top 34 surfers will be vying for glory in the powerful North Shore waves. THE South African junior team’s hopes of individual and team medals at the World Junior Surfing Championships rest on the shoulders of Adin Masencamp of the Strand, Sebastian Williams of Durban and the diminutive Kai Woolf of Jeffreys Bay.
After a week of unruly surf ranging from knee high to over 3m in the Azores archipelago off the coast of Portugal, this trio are the only members of the 12-person team still in contention going into the final two days of the world’s biggest event for surfers aged 18 and under.
Go to www.isaworlds.com to see more details and to watch live.