Ribbink secures medal in paddle board race

MORNINGSIDE stand up paddle boarder, Brandon Ribbink, held onto fourth place in a battle with Spain and USA to secure a medal for the South African team at the 2014 ISA World Stand Up Paddle and Paddle Board Championships in Granada, Nicaragua.

“On the final day of competition in my last event to secure a medal for team SA I realised half way into the 30 minute paddle board race that I was going to have to dig deep to hold onto a place,” said Brandon.

Early on in the men's technical paddle board race, two competitors from team Australia, Rhys Burrows and Rory Chapman, along with Andrew Newton for team New Zealand, took up the race at the front and soon after the second peloton was made up of Spain, USA and South Africa.

“Having been selected for the event as team SA's stand up surfer I needed to borrow a paddle board for this race event from team USA's female athlete Carter Graves. This proved detrimental to team USA because for the remaining 15 minutes of this race I put everything I had into keeping both USA and Spain out of the medals. It wasn't until the final sprint up the beach that I knew I was going to have the endurance to keep USA's Shane Scoggins behind me,” he said.

Having won the world paddle board title back home at Rescue 96 and getting silver at the recent national lifesaving championships in Cape Town, Brandon said he knew he was going to be fast enough for a final sprint but had to hang it all out to stay the distance with paddlers with much more race experience over this distance.

“This race will certainly be one to remember as one of my favorites having left my best on the water making sure I won the tactical struggle that lasted most of the second half of the 6km course,” said Brandon.