| World Surfing Games set to Portugal |
| Sunday, 27 July 2008 10:19 |
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Completing a calendar of events where the highest level of juvenile and veteran surfing was seen, now the turn comes to the best world surfers, longboarders and bodyboarders to make their presentations during the 22nd edition of the ISA World Surfing Games which will take place from October 11th through 19th at Costa de Caparica, Portugal. Once again, matching the true Olympic spirit, almost 350 surfers from more than 40 countries will meet at the greatest surfing competition in the world, to define the World Surfing Champion Nation, as well as the individual champions in the following categories: Open Men, Women, Bodyboard, Women’s Bodyboard & Longboard. A total of ten members per team will step into the water to represent their country, accompanied by their managers and coaches. The quota per category and per country will be conformed by four Open Men, two Open Women, two Bodyboard Men, one Bodyboard Woman and one Longboarder. Each of the team members will add points and thus the nation will be awarded the highest honor it can receive in the surfing world. Fernando Aguerre, ISA President, commented in relation to this future event as the last one in this year’s ISA Calendar: “I’m really happy with this year’s ISA calendar. It’s actually historical, for the first time we have three important events on the same year: Junior, Open and Masters. And the popularity of these three is something you can see by the growing amount of teams and athletes attending each contest.” In the past edition of the World Surfing Games, which took place in Huntington Beach California in October 2006, Australia stood once again at the top of the podium in the overall team placing, but surprisingly only obtaining one gold medal, that of Kira Llewellyn in the Bodyboard Women category. To bear in mind History From then on, fifteen World Championships were held. In the beginning, and until 1976, they were organized by the International Surfing Federation – ISF. From there onwards, the International Surfing Association supervised the world championships. In 1996, to demonstrate that surfing can be part of the Olympic Games, ISA President Fernando Aguerre created the concept and name World Surfing Games, in which the best surfers of every country in the world confront each other in a single event, establishing the different world champions and the Surfing Medal Board that designates the most developed surfing nation. Champion Nations: The Arena: Costa de Caparica It is a chain of very consistent left and right beach breaks strangled in some beaches by wharfs. It receives swells from the South and West and their different variations. It starts to break with waves half-a-meter high and above, and supports up to 8-feet swells.
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