Auto-Sleepers British Bodyboard tour

The third scheduled event on the Auto-Sleepers British Bodyboard tour was the Greenaway Pro surf festival in St Ives at the end of August. Despite being greeted by small conditions, the 24 strong field were as keen as ever to get in the water and battle it out for the prizes on offer and the ASG Tour points.

The small but bowly conditions offered contestants short rides with just enough grunt to enable some combination moves to impress the judging panel. Early round stand-outs Steve Hall and Phil Milsom found enough speed on their waves to mix things up, throwing a few buckets of spray off of their reverse moves.

In the quarter finals, one of the contest favourites Jack Johns (tour leader coming into the event) missed out on progressing to the next round as he struggled to find two high scoring waves in the fickle conditions; but most of the other event favourites progressed to the latter stages.

As the tide dropped back on Porthmeor beach in the shadow of the St Ives Tate, the swell picked up and so did the action in the semi-finals. A summer of coaching from Newquay’s Aidan Salmon paid off for his young protégé Steve Hall, with Hall narrowly beating his mentor and Northern Ireland’s Bosco MacAuley into the final. He was alongside London’s Remi Geffroy, who continued to demonstrate excellent wave selection and consistency through the heats. In the second semi a tough draw saw seasoned competitors Saltash’s Aaron Dinham and Truro’s Alex Winkworth edge out Phil Milsom and Clive Stopper.

With conditions set to worsen for the next day’s finals, the decision was taken to run the bodyboard event through to conclusion and the four man final made up of Winkworth, Hall, Dinham and Geffroy hit the water to decide the points. Hall and Winkworth both opened with high scoring combinations with Dinham hot on their heels utilising his consistent roll spin combos on the right-handers. However, the quiet Geffroy showed all his fitness training had paid off as he scooped into a right which enabled the stand out move of the competition in the form of a big float reverse. He followed this up with a second solid ride to nail first place.

The prizes were presented at Saturday night’s epic after party, and saw (from right to left) Geffroy 1st, Dinham 2nd, Winkworth 3rd and Hall 4th.