Excellent surfing in the second day of the Eurosurf 2023 in Santa Cruz, Portugal.

The second day of Eurosurf 2023 was the day of the debut of men’s and women’s surf competition, with excellent level of riding being the main attraction with some notable performances with standouts like Germany’s Leon Glatzer and Dylan Groen, Ireland’s Geaorid McDaid, Sweden’s Christian Portelli, Israel’s Uri Uziel, or Poland’s Maksymilian Michalewski in the men’s comp while German Rachel Presti and Camilla Kemp scored the highest heat total scores in the women’s side.

It is still too soon to try to see some trends regarding the candidates for the collective title in this Eurosurf but it is already inevitable to mention Italy’s outstanding performance throughout the event, as well as Germany and Spain.

On the other hand, England lost junior European champion Lukas Skinner to the repechage rounds and Portugal saw Afonso Antunes and Guilherme Ribeiro fall to the repechage as well. Obviously, nothing is lost for the English or the Portuguese, but it doesn’t bode well for their aspirations regarding the European title.

On a side note, among the many excellent individual performances in this event, we talked to Polish surfer Maksymilian Michalewski who surprised many people with his powerful rail work.

Maksymilian is a 20 year old born and bred Polish surfer that developed his skills all over Europe, especially in Portugal, where he trains nowadays, and Jersey where he studied.

“My first experience with surfing was when I was 12 years old, in the Algarve, where I went on vacation with my parents. And afterwards in the Canary Islands. Every time I went on summer holydays, I surfed a lot for a couple of weeks but then came back to school and not surf at all for months. That went on for some time and I couldn’t progress that much. Then, when I was about 15, I went to live and study in Jersey (Channel Islands) and developed my surfing there. And lately, for the last three years I’ve been living and training in Peniche being coached by Portuguese Filipe Anjos”, says the Polish young prodigy, who dreams about being a professional surfer.

“The first time I realized I could have a career in surfing was during the ISA world junior’s, in 2018, in Huntington Beach where I finished 15th. That’s when I first realized I had potential to pursue this dream of surfing for a living.”

A dream that is shared by a lot of the men and women we can watch surfing at Santa Cruz for the Eurosurf 2023. So may the surfing continue!