August 5th, 2007

Somewhere in Nicaragua

It’s been a long day so let’s get right to it. For the ladies, we had a close heat with MaiTai (we have no idea how to spell your name…) taking home 1st. Ally and Erin took home 3rd and 2nd respectively. Nice work ladies!

Longboard was dominated by Oliver Solis, who worked in a headstand along with his Cucaracha. Jimmy and Junior, both from Limon, took home 3rd and 2nd.

For the Juniors we had a surprise – Rex and Darwin came in 2nd and 3rd and this kid in the black shirt on the left got first! Congrats kid in the black shirt (sorry, we didn’t get your name).

Onto the National finals where we had Augusto, Rex, Samir and Oliver competing. Samir, the local, had the eye of the tiger and determined not to lose at his home break.

Here is Rex, showing nice form off the top. Rex, at 14 years old, stepped up his game and made it to the finals with the big boys this contest.

Augusto, who is always proud to represent NSR, put up a fight as well.

Oliver, who is one of the most powerful surfers in the bunch laid down some heavy frontside hacks like this one in the final.

That leaves only the International Finals remaining. Right before the heat, Lance Moss accepted a full sponsor package from NSR. The package was two NSR stickers, which were immediately placed on his board. We were certain this would help him win against JJ, Brodi and the Guru.

Donald “Guru” Stone has officially achieved legend status. At 50 years old he not only made the finals with the young ripper snappers, he almost won the whole thing. Here he is, showing some local knowledge and getting one of the few barrels of the contest. Donald got 2nd place today. Congrats!

It seemed like the NSR sticker was working as Captain Moss laid down some serious hacks. In the end, it was enough for third place.

And the surprise winner of the day goes to Brodi “CT-RUBBERBANDMAN” who SUBU’d his way to 1st place. Congrats Man! (Hey, is that Gorgeous George in the background?)

The crowd gathered as the overall scores were tallied and anticipation built before the announcement of the overall Country Champion. Here’s the scene looking down from the hill.

And the big winner is…REX! Rex quietly built points through the season and came into today’s event in 4th place overall. Placing 2nd was good enough to propel him past Luis, who was over 1000 pts ahead of him, but failed to post a result in this last contest. While many people probably overlooked him as a Junior competitor this year, you can bet it won’t happen again next year. Rex, congratulations man, you’re one of the big boys now! Here he is being carried off by Gerardo and Luis – both from SJDS and both genuinely proud of him. That’s what we like to see fellas.

We’ll leave you with this shot of the SJDS crew. One more time, we’d like to thank all of the sponsors and the people who helped make this the best year of surf competition Nicaragua has ever had. Surfing in Nicaragua is progressing rapidly – we can’t wait to see what the future holds! This is the last event for this year so stay tuned to NSR for next years contest schedule. Lucha is back in action tomorrow. Until then…