Hayle Surf Life Saving Club competitors traveled to the South of France to compete in the biennial world life saving championships against a 2,500 strong international field.
The competition was run from the La Grande Motte beach, on the Mediterranean coast south of Montpellier. The conditions however were a home from home for the masters competitors during the first 2 days of beach & ocean events with strong winds pushing a fair wind swell into the beach, more like Cornwall than the Med!
The Masters team delivered some fantastic results especially in the ocean relay events where they were up against strong competition from the French & Australian teams. In the ladies ocean relay final Trish Merrett, Traci Parker & Carol Penberthy skilfully fought their way around a wind & wave swept course to secure the bronze medal. Not to be outdone by the ladies the mens board relay team of Phil Needham, Alan Roberts & Dave Parker later secured bronze in their final. Back on dry land the mens beach sprint relay team of Paul Cottle, Ben Holtaway & Phil Needham put their heads down into the strong wind and stunned their opposition by taking the gold medal and walking away as world champions in one of the last races of the competition. Sprint specialist Maggie Mann took home 2 Gold medals in her age group for the beach flags and beach sprint. Fifty years of running around the sand dunes in Hayle paid off for David Morgan as he won gold in the 1km beach run. Carol Penberthy added gold to her earlier bronze medal by winning her age group in the 1km run and Paul Cottle collected silver for his individual beach sprint.
Hayles younger competitors fielded a strong team in the youth and open categories of the world championships which followed the masters event. The star performance came from the ladies ocean relay team of Alice Latham, Emily Corin, Andrea Harvey & Amy Jolly who finished 8th in the final and were the only UK team to reach this last stage from the heats and semis. Other notable individual results were a 7th place finish in the 2km beach run final by Alice Latham, a 9th place in the youth beach run by Vicky Burlingham and two of Hayles top ski paddlers made the semi-finals of their respective age groups; Emily Corin in the open and Tegen Hughes in the youth competition. Tom Onley & Nick Pearson also performed well against strong opposition reaching the latter stages of the mens paddleboard competition. High hopes had been pinned on Daniel Latham in the beach flags event however he took an early exit in the first round, his only excuse being his concern over losing his newly acquired wedding ring as he frantically dived for the flags.
Emily Corin had a busy two weeks as she also represented Great Britain in the National teams competition as one of 4 ladies from the team of 8. Emily held her own against the professional ironwomen of Australia, New Zealand & South Africa and finished a very respectable 12th in the surf ski final after paddling strongly through the heats and semi’s from an original field of 60 international athletes.
For further information please contact Ben Holtaway on 07833547651 or David Parker on 07967213204
Masters Team
Ladies Ocean Relay Team
Emily Corin GB Paddler
