Santa cruz is always a place to go during July, cause the Internacional de Skimboard Ocean Spirit 2018! It is always a big skim contest and boards festival and friendly meeting where lots of guys ride tons of waves.
One more time, Skimboarding was the jewel of that big international board sports in Europe, being problably most important skim contest of the year.
After some rare results of our riders during 2017 edition this year could be epic… With four Dogflut team riders competing on semifinals to be into a full Dogflut final heat and fight for the victory! Unfortunatelly, our european legend, Hugo Santos, can not to find his wave and was eliminated and Ricardo Dias, champion in 2015 dropped out to just for a tenths after fail a 3 shove it after ride best wave of all heat. Bad luck for one of fittest skimboarderds in Europe and probably around the world. Ricardo was 5th and Hugo 7th, not bad!
In add, was the same to our girl ‘Xoxe’ Conde -who wons in 2017- that fall in semifinals to finish with a good 5th position, after a strange semifinal results. No more to say. Should be better, but could be worst. She is focused into the Internacional Trafalgar now!
In sub-14 division, our little boy, Ale Montañes, dominated every heat to the victory. He is riding as a semipro and he is only 12… Future is so close. After a little mental block during the beggining of final, he knew to find his way and win! Was epic. And our shaper Sergio Gil ‘Shein take the 3rd position in Masters division.
Back to the Open… Juanlu González shows a part of his potential to be first in every heat in the way to the final round and Simao Pinto advance to the final too -with some troubles during semifinals-.
Cause rare wave conditions during the final time, was a round to control timming and knowing how to take advantage of opportunities. Miguel Brazz took his moment and found two good ones to wrap to barrel and takes the victory, he deserved! After him, Simao Pintao and Juanlu Gonzalez take the 2nd and 3rd place for another great result of our team riders one more year.
Photos: Ocean Spirit & Lorena Arévalo
Here it it Juanlu’s video edit: