From TGI Staff Reports World champion-elect Sunny Garcia became Hawaii’s most successful pro surfer ever with a convincing victory in today’s final of the 2000 Rip Curl Cup at Hawaii’s Sunset Beach – the year’s final Association of Surfing Professionals
From TGI Staff Reports
World champion-elect Sunny Garcia became Hawaii’s most successful pro surfer
ever with a convincing victory in today’s final of the 2000 Rip Curl Cup at
Hawaii’s Sunset Beach – the year’s final Association of Surfing Professionals
(ASP) World Qualifying Series (WQS) tournament.
In magnificent three to
four metre surf, Garcia survived a near-drowning in an earlier heat today to
claim his second Sunset Beach title with a powerful display, surfing four times
in the testing conditions to eventually claim the $10,000 first prize.
The
2000 Rip Curl Cup was a six-star WQS competition (the highest grade), carrying
$100,000 total prize money and the final results have a major bearing on the
surfers who qualify for next year’s World Championship Tour (WCT).
Today’s
Rip Curl Cup final saw 30-year-old Garcia overcome three of the surfing world’s
most exciting youngsters – 20-year-old Portuguese rookie Tiago Pires (runner-up
in the World Pro Junior Championship last month) taking second place and
$5,000, 22-year-old Hawaiian Andy Irons, the current world number 24, ending in
third place with $4,000; and 20-year-old defending Rip Curl Cup champion Zane
Harrison, of Queensland’s Sunshine Coast, finishing in fourth place and walking
away with US$3,000.
Despite becoming the most successful Hawaiian surfer
ever, Garcia was humble in accepting today’s victory. He said: “To me, Dane
Kealoha (Hawaiian surf star of the 1980s) will always be the best Hawaiian
surfer ever. I don’t even know what it would take to get to his level and I’d
never consider myself in the same league. He’s been my idol since I started
surfing at seven years of age.”
“I knew going into the final that it was
going to be hard. Paddling out for the final my arms were cramping. The other
surfers beat me out and I was paddling as fast as I could. I didn’t even know
when I came in that I had won. A win was a long way from a near-drowning in the
first heat,” Garcia said.
“In my first heat of the morning I grabbed a
little wave and the whitewash hit me, I fell and got dragged quite a long way
and couldn’t get up for air. I was right beneath the surface and I could feel
my hands out of water, but every time I took a deep breath I swallowed water,”
Garcia said.
After clinching his first world championship in Brazil in
October after 15 years on tour, Garcia has now all but won a record fifth Vans
Triple Crown – the world’s most prestigious event series. The final jewel in
the crown, the Mountain Dew Pipeline Masters, looks set to be the crowning
moment of Garcia’s career.
