Indian Open surfing gets underway

The second edition of the Indian Open of Surfing got underway amidst much fanfare at the Sasihithlu beach of this Karnataka city on Friday.

The three-day surfing extravaganza will conclude on Sunday. The opening day of the championship saw surfers fighting difficult conditions due to a New Moon day, resulting in extreme tide conditions.

Surfers competed across five categories -- U-14, U-16, seniors (23-30 years), Masters (30 years and above) and Open category.

The preliminary elimination rounds on Friday stretched accross multiple heats. The top two from each heat advanced the second round which will be followed by the semi-finals.

Surfers across all the categories were given 15 minutes each to compete under testing conditions in the sea. Within these 15 minutes the surfers are allowed to catch 10 waves to showcase their skills, and the best two waves for each are accounted towards their competition scores by the judges.

Winners were adjudged on the basis of the manoeuvers performed by each surfer in the water and their ability to catch the wave.

The day started with the Masters category. Over nine surfers participated in this category in the first round while six of them moved to the semi-finals.

Moorthy Megavan, Sandeep Samuel, Mukesh Panjanathan, A. Venkatesan , Velmurugan and K. Vengat were the winners of the Masters category who secured a direct semi-final spot scheduled for Saturday.

The senior's category witnessed participation from 26 surfers, while 15 of them made it to the second round.

In the open category, 13 surfers from France, Maldives, Madagascar and India participated in the first round.

French surfer Perceval Fayon along with Maldivian surfers Ismail Miglal and Ammaday booked themselves a semi-final spot. Indian surfers Dharani Selvakumar, Manikandan Appu, Rahul Govind and Sekar Patchai also made it to the semi- final round.

The U-14 category experienced the most enthusiastic bunch of surfers. This category saw 24 participants fight for a spot in the next round but only 11 qualified.

The novice surfers who made it to the second round are Taying Arun, Chand, Subramani Muniyan, Selva Muniyan, Manju, Surbhi Krishnan, Akhilan, Omkar Bhat, Srikanth, Abdul Rajak Jamaldeen and Deekshith Bhaskar.

The U-16 category saw participation from 24 surfers while only 11 of them qualified for round two. Sanjay Selvamani, Harish Muthu, Vishal Mendan, Subramani Munjan, Sunil Dhayalan, Karthik Munusamy, Nithishvarun Thiruvengadam, Ajeesh Ali, Santhosan Santhokumar, Sivaraj Tiabu, M. Manikandan were the ones to make it to the second round in the category.

--IANS

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