Surf’s up in Madang

Sports

By HENRY MORABANG
MORE than 120 million viewers will have access to the Kumul World Longboard Surfing Championships live out of Tupira village, Bogia, Madang next week, national president Andrew Abel says.
The event at the venue for the March 18-25 championship, about two hours northwest of Madang town, will be live streamed around the globe.
Surfing Association Papua New Guinea (SAPNG) president Abel said the live stream would be made possible with PNG Telikom VSAT technology and support worth K107,000, providing an uplink in their first such set up for a world event in rural PNG.
“It’s a first in the country for SAPNG as well,” Abel said.
He said the World Surf League (WSL) would bring their own recording equipment, including cameras to capture the event on the shores, with interviews of competitors, fans, officials and locals, and a roving drone would record footage of the surfers in action on the waves.
PNG’s own Titima Mange (men’s) and Marion Longa (women’s) will be among the list of more than 50 surfers, the rest of whom will be professionals.
“I believe Mange and Longa, who have competed in the 2007 and 2011 SAPNG national surf titles and Pacific Games in Samoa and New Caledonia, are well-prepared and have experienced competing at a high-level surfing competition,” Abel said.
“They both know what it takes to surf a longboard to meet the requirements of international WSL judges, with specific criteria on traditional and modern manoeuvres on all sections of the wave, including catching barrels and completing the wave.”
“Tupira will provide challenging waves for all, especially if they reach big sizes.
“It has good waves for shortboard surfers but will pose a challenge for longboarders.
“I am confident that our two SAPNG wildcards will give the WSL international athletes a good challenge,” Abel said.
The SAPNG chief said the tournament was relatively small on expenditure but would have a worthwhile return, with the exposure of a small remote PNG community to the surfing world.
The visiting international surfers (36 men and 18 women) include those who qualified for the final of the WSL World Longboard Championship event last December in Hainan Island, China.