Fourteen-year-old Chelsea Tuach, the reigning Caribbean women’s champion, will be representing Barbados at the Billabong ISA World Surfing Games in Peru next week.
The consistent one- to three-metre waves of Punta Hermosa are eager to receive the best surfers of the globe, who will be representing their countries in the event known as the “Olympics of Surfing”.
More than 200 surfers from 30 countries will be participating – all seeking to achieve the biggest reward an athlete can dream of: to honour their country with an excellent performance. To this end Tuach has been training hard for these Games, which will represent another step in her remarkably rapid rise on the international scene.
At the last World Surfing Games, held in Costa Rica, she was Barbados’ top performer, achieving a world ranking of 33 in the Open Women’s division and helping Barbados to achieve a creditable ranking of 23.
She was also Barbados’ top performer at the 2008 ISA World Junior Surfing Championships in Seignosse, France, where she achieved the highest junior ranking of any female surfer in Barbados, 25 out of 86 of the world’s best under-18 girls.
This year Chelsea has had a solid performance on the local scene, finishing in the top two of every event. In addition, she has two regional wins under her belt.
In April she won the Ladies’ Division of the Sans Souci Pro, Trinidad, for the second consecutive year. In July she won the title of Makka Pro Ladies’ Champion for the third consecutive year.
In August she added an international win to her list of achievements, becoming the 16-and-under girls’ champion at the Ripcurl Gromsearch in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. With this win she became one of an elite group of the region’s top juniors to be selected to compete at the National Final to be held in Puerto Rico at the end of the month.
In early September Tuach went on to create history by becoming Barbados’ first female surfer to win a Pro event outside the Caribbean when she won the Angel Eyewear National Kidney Foundation Women’s Pro in Cocoa Beach, Florida.
The World Surfing Games experience is going to be an invaluable one for the teenager and for keeping Barbados visible in the surfing world. And Tuach is very grateful to all her sponsors and benefactors for helping to make it possible for her to attend. (PR/BA
