|
Costa Rica's Gilbert Brown Has
Outstanding Day at World Surging
Games
Huntington Beach, California -
The International Surfing
Association calls Costa Rica a
power country here at the 2006
Lost Energy Drink International
Surfing Association (ISA) World
Surfing Games (WSG) in
Huntington Beach.
That’s because on this sixth day
of the Olympics of Surfing,
every Tico competitor was still
fighting and surfing with
furious determination to win.
Going down to the last wave and
buzzer for their country, Diego
Naranjo, Nino Myrie, Luis Vindas
and Lisbeth Vindas were
eventually eliminated from
competition this afternoon in
their respective Repercharge
heats.
Gilbert Brown, however, is still
alive and was recognized by the
announcer this afternoon as “the
surprise of the World Surfing
Games” as he entered the water
for his third heat of the day -
after passing two other
Repercharge Rounds. The
accolades were for the Puerto
Viejo surfer’s demonstration of
tremendous control, amongst a
field of the highest level of
international challengers.
Gilbert did not disappoint. He
came out of the water 20 minutes
later with the win, with 2nd
place going to Gavin Roberts
(South Africa), 3rd place was
Joan Duru (France) and 4th Alan
Stokes (UK). Mid-morning, the
dreaded man rose up again to 1st
place; France’s Romain Laulhe
was 2nd, Brazil’s Wiggolly
Dantas was 3rd and Puerto Rico’s
William Sue-a-Quan came in 4th.
At 8:00 a.m. PDT, Brown managed
to find enough open faces at
high tide, in the closed out 4-
to 5-foot waves, to earn the top
spot, 1st place in his first
heat of the day against New
Zealand’s A.J. Mathews in 2nd,
Tahiti’s Teiva Mare in 3rd and
Argentina’s Maximiliano Siri in
4th.
At the end of the day, Costa
Rica had surfed well enough as a
team so far in these 6 days, to
have earned a 7th place
provisional ranking among the 33
countries in the World Surfing
Games. Additionally, the Tico
country has the best results to
this point among the Latin
American nations. Australia is
currently ranked #1 in the WSG.
Tomorrow, Gilbert Brown will
surf his next Open heat, at Area
1 sometime after 7:00 a.m.
|
|
