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Chronicle: LatinTour Surf Championship Closing
Faustino Salcedo | Nov 29, 2012
The champion and the first places in the female category. | Photographer: Faustino Salcedo
Final stage of a 3-day tournament, involving 10 countries and over a hundred competitors.
Once again the beaches of Nicaragua became the epicenter of an international surfing event, sporting it's enviable waves and wind over competitors from ALAS LatinTour Championship 2012. This time the scene was Aposentillo beach, in Chinandega, place where the most important competitors in the region stayed during three days, who presented a finale in the 4 categories in dispute.
On Sunday November 25 the sun radiated impressive as the wind tried to create the ideal waves for the final tournament that began on Friday 23, organized by businesswoman Lucy Valenti, the Nicaraguan Tourism Institute (INTUR) and the Nicaraguan Association Surf. I00 competitors from 10 countries attended the event, from Uruguay, Argentina, Mexico, Costa Rica, Peru and Nicaragua.
On Sunday when we arrived to the beach, we observed a small attendance from the people, however, when each category was coming to its end emotion came over all, causing a feeling of being surrounded by hundreds of people .
The first final to be played was the one for women, which had a strong competiotion between Nicaraguan and Peruvian. For Nicaragua competed Ciminero Holly Beck and Danielle, both Americans but settled in Nicaragua for five years. They said that his heart is here and it's an honor to represent the country. The Peruvians Anali Gomez and Vania Torrez were the contenders who completed the group.
From the very start of the competition Holly Beck was dominant, she took the waves and got more points, but in the last five minutes Anali Gomez, known as "The Golden Bold", managed to make an impressive combination of sound waves and the final whistle was triumphant. In the sand, Peru competitors shouted and jumped, the crowd was excited. While coming out of the water Holly showed in his face a sense of satisfaction, then said that despite the defeat she had fun and knew he faced great surfers.
The excitement continued seizing those in the sand watching the competitors of the Longboard division, which consists of surfing with large tables. The winner of this category was the Argentine Martín Pérez, he laughingly said he had a good time in Nicaragua despite what his companions said, he did not fall. That's what he said while joking about women that can be found in the country.
In the Junior Professional was another representative of Nicaragua: Sean Pearson, also of American origin, who placed second. Pearson has over eight years of living in the country and said laughing that he loves beaches, women and Nicaraguan rum, that's the reason why the Nicaraguan flag is drawn on his board. In the Open category Carlos Muñoz from Costa Rica was the winner.
The closure
Everything has an end, and that's the time when we analyze the results and allowed the criticism about the event. Sierraalta Karim, president of the Asociación Latinoamericana de Surf (ALAS), was in charge of the closing of the event, who jokingly talks about the beauty of Nicaragua with each competitor. Karim looked pleased and said that the organization of this event deserved awards apply to Latin American tour, which now moves to the Isla Margarita in Venezuela, where they make the next date. One of the Venezuelans competitors mentioned with a look of longing, that she wishes in his country they could conduct an event so neat, so congratulated to the organizers of the event.
During closing many competitors requested more participation of Nicaraguans surfers, who have the ideal scenery to practice surf. Sierralta brought hope saying that Nicaragua may soon have a world surfing champion.
Surfing in Nicaragua now expanded its borders to the North Pacific of the country, now not only are the beaches of Rivas which are in the eye of the followers of the surf, but those of Chinandega proved a natural pitch all attributes for an important event. For now we just have to wait for the ISA Junior World Championship 2013, to be held on the beaches of Tola, Rivas.
Translated by Cynthia Cordero