South Africa bows out of INS ISA World Surfing Games in Costa Rica

The South African surfing team bowed out of the INS ISA World Surfing Games at Jaco Beach in Costa Rica yesterday (Friday) when the four team members who had elevated the country into medal contention on Thursday were all eliminated on Day 6 of the eight day event.
Fittingly it was team captain Faye Zoetmulder (Cape St Francis) who delivered the best result for South Africa.
After winning her Women’s repecharge Round 4 with a great ride in the dying seconds, Zoetmulder narrowly lost out to Peruvians Melanie Giunta and Anali Gomez in Round 5, finishing equal 11th overall and contributing 475 points to the team total.
Tanika Hoffman (Hout Bay) also added a creditable 413 points to the team tally when she ended her campaign in equal 16th place following her fourth place finish behind Zoetmulder in Round 4.
South Africa’s slide from medal contention started when Shane Sykes (Salt Rock) battled to find the waves with high scoring potential in his Men’s Repecharge Round 5 encounter. Despite having the surfing skills to match his opponents, Sykes was left without a canvas to work on and slipped to fourth place in his heat and equal 22nd overall with 375 points.
By contrast, Matt McGillivray started his heat in the same round with a solid 6.67 point ride. But the Jeffreys Bay teenager then sat waiting for the set waves while his rivals got busy on the medium sized runners and he eventually also ended fourth with the same overall position and points haul as Sykes
Including contributions of 240 and 180 points from Dylan Lightfoot (Jeffreys Bay) and Jordy Maree (Kalk Bay) respectively, the South African team is in 12th position on the provisional rankings with a total of 2 058 points, just 65 points behind multiple team champions Australia, who also had their last team members eliminated yesterday.
Peru has taken over at the top of the leaderboard and still has four team members in contention, as do Portugal and hosts and defending team champions Costa Rica. Japan, France and New Zealand each have two competitors in action on the final weekend while the USA, Venezuela, Argentina and Ecuador each have one.
The INS ISA World Surfing Games continues with the remaining Main Event and Repecharge heats, along with the final of the Aloha Cup tag-team event final that will be contested by Argentina, USA, Costa Rica and New Zealand today.
The finals of the Men’s and Women’s events, and the crowning of the ISA World Team Champions, will take place on Sunday.

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