The “usual suspects” didn’t disappoint but there were hints of surprise in the first day of competition at the 2022 Eurosurf Junior
The first waves were surfed at a European Surfing Federation major event for the first time in three years, today at the 2022 Eurosurf Junior, at Praia do Mirante in Santa Cruz, and as expected, France, Spain, Portugal and Italy dominated the field, although with some subtle hints of change. Like the pleasant performances of the Moroccan surfers Ines Tebbai and Ranya Squalli, in a day dedicated to Longboard and U16 surf.
Squalli even caused an upset to the Spanish team, winning her heat, followed by the Italian Victoria Backhaus and sending Spaniard Maria Noor Mentado to the repechage way too soon for the likes of Spanish aspirations for a European title.
There has been a promise of so-called mid-tier teams to ascend closer to the podium in big European surfing events. Judging by today´s performance, teams like Morocco but also England’s trio of Belle Betteridge, Georgie-May Hicks and Laura Sandland or the Dutch duo Lune Van Dijk and Tiara Van Der Huls might stir up a scene until now dominated by the Latin quartet of France, Spain, Portugal and Italy. We are excited to see how the remainder of the event unfolds.
On the other hand, the standout of the day was a Spanish surfer: Ibone Gomez, that amassed the biggest total score of the day, 12.64, crushing the competition on her first heat in a ESF event ever.
“I am very happy with my surfing and enjoying myself a lot. I just want to progress as far as possible and help my team do well in this event” said the Basque surfer Gomez, 15, refusing to be more specific in her goals while saying with a cheeky grin: “I’ll just say we want to do as good as possible”.
Meanwhile, trying to reflect the entire European surfing scene in this event, we spoke to Jesper Carlson, sports manager for Denmark, a fledging nation in European surfing.
“It’s my first time in a European event and I’m loving the atmosphere, the organizers are doing an awesome work, we can see they have lots of experience. Although we have national competitions, this is pretty new for us. This is my first surfing event outside Denmark and it’s the same for our surfers but we are trying to get more international experience. The waves are bigger in Portugal than what we are used to but we have to learn and adapt and it is cool to see the Portuguese beach culture, and the level of the Portuguese surfers. Regarding our expectations, we are here to learn, we have no expectations about the outcome and we hope to inspire our young surfers to evolve as surfers and bring those teachings home with them.”