Salt Rock’s Sophie Bell crowned in Cape Town
The event was held with idyllic 1 to 1.3 metre waves at Long Beach in Kommetjie in the Cape last week
Sophie Bell took the the junior women’s title at the BOS Cape Crown surf contest presented by Billabong.
Her victory saw Bell move into the No. 1 spot on the junior women’s leaderboard with four of the nine events on the 2017 calendar completed.
The event was held with idyllic 1 to 1.3 metre waves at Long Beach in Kommetjie in the Cape last week.
“I hope I can keep it up and eventually take the overall win, I did it last year and it would be really special to take it again,” said Bell.
Kommetjie resident Summer Sutton made full use of her local knowledge to dominate the women’s final, riding twice as many waves as her opponents and leading the heat until the last three minutes.
Rankings leader Kayla Nogueira (Umhlanga) and Sarah Ingram (Cape Town) battled to find waves with good scoring potential and Bell had produced just one excellent score as time started to run out.
But with three minutes left on the clock, Bell used her priority to catch a long right that just kept producing for the powerful natural footer and she slammed four high risk manoeuvres to take the lead.
Sutton had a final opportunity to grab victory as the siren sounded to end the final but came up just short of the score required.
“It took me a while to catch a good wave and it ended up being quite nerve wracking.”
Bell, the winner of both the open and junior women’s events in East London, is 195 points ahead of Nogueira, the winner of Port Elizabeth and Durban events, with Kirsty McGillivray (Jeffreys Bay) in third place.
The rankings points earned in the JQS1,000 men’s and women’s events count towards the 2017 WSL Africa junior titles, the selection of the top four men and top two women for the WSL Junior Championships in Australia in January 2018 and towards the 18-and-under titles in the 20th edition of the Billabong Junior Series.
Bell said that it was a very well organised event with a good vibe and, overall, great waves.
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