The fourth day of the Eurosurf 2023 in Santa Cruz, Portugal, was highlighted by drama and joy as the main candidates to the collective title experienced the stress of the competition and even loss, in the case of England’s Lukas Skinner, European junior champion who was taken out of the men’s surf contest.

On the other side of the coin, the Dutch Beyrick de Vries was the euphoric protagonist of the highest scoring wave of the event (8.83) and the highest heat total (16.50), ironically in men’s surf repechage round 2, which illustrates how high is the level of performance in this event, even comparing it with the last Eurosurf in 2019. Not that the “usual suspects” Spain, Portugal, Italy, Germany and England are surfing better but because of the way the so called “less powerful” teams are closing the gap and performing admirably.

Teams like Sweden, Israel, or, in the case of de Vries, Netherlands, have been turning heads and stirring the pot of this Eurosurf 2023.

The volatile character of this year’s event is well illustrated by teams like Portugal, who immediately lost surfers to the repechage rounds in the first confrontations but now have found their stride and won every single heat today, or Italy that started with a bang and has been losing steam, now with most of its surfers in the repechage rounds with the exception of Edoardo Papa in the men’s surf division.

Papa, himself a protagonist today after a heroic comeback on the first heat of round 3 when he immediately was penalized with an interference that cost him half of his best score but still managed to surf his way back to redemption, which is to say, second place of the heat.

So, tons of drama and great surfing that promise to continue tomorrow as the ocean promises bigger swell.

The Eurosurf returns tomorrow at 9h00 GMT and all the live action and results are available here at www.eurosurfing.org