Coffs Harbour, Australia: South Africa’s André Burger has won the World Championship in the New Age category at the 2009 Waveski Surfing World Titles at Emerald Beach in Coff’s Harbour, held from 5 to 12 September.

To his credit, the 21 year old East Londoner, who only this year graduated from the Junior category (17 to 20 years) into the New Age category (21 to 29 years), fought off intense competition from France’s Orion Carbonnel, Justine Guillaume and Renan Leloutre and Australian Ben John to take the crown.

The preliminary rounds provided almost perfect conditions with 4 to 5 foot surf, which saw the South African and French riders going head to head and blowing the surf apart with breathtaking aerials to gasps of delight and amazement from the appreciative spectators on the beach, and Burger topping it all with the Holy Grail of waveski manoevres, a spectacular aerial corkscrew barrel roll, which he landed with great style. Conditions deteriorated in the final heat but Burger’s exuberance, with good length of ride and four big slashes, ensured that his overall scores were amongst the highest in all categories of the competition.

In the Cadets category (13 to 16 years), Border’s Ruan Brand performed suberbly and wiped the all-Australian opposition out with a spectacularly high score of 16.3 in his final heat to take his first World Title. He read his waves well and produced some great power pocket surfing with a high level of control and consistency. Team manager Lyndon Storer commented that “Ruan is showing serious potential and should be watched in future - we have great expectations of him in years to come.”

South African contestants also fared well in the majority of the other finals, showing good depth and breadth of talent across all divisions. Cape Town’s Malan Calitz achieved a 3rd place in the fiercely contested Open category against 57 other competitors, Border’s Doug Copeland was 3rd in the Masters category, EP’s Sandra Pienaar pulled 4th place in the Women’s category, Strand’s Gerhardus van Zyl took 4th in the Junior category and WP’s Willy Graser was 4th in the Veterans category.

Photographs: Thanks to the guys at ©Penior Photography.com

Article - by David Park-Ross.