Costa Rica obtains 8th position in the 2024 Pan American Surfing Championship

Costa Rica obtains 8th position in the 2024 Pan American Surfing Championship

The PAN AMERICAN SURFING GAMES 2024, held in Punta Rocas, Peru, have concluded.

After overcoming a significant financial issue, the Costa Rican delegation managed to travel to the event to begin their participation, and these were the results obtained by the Costa Ricans in this edition.

The first category of the event was Bodyboarding, where Costa Rica was represented by athletes Dulce Agüero and Yuliana Campos in the women's category and Jerry Pastrana in the men's. Dulce Agüero began her journey in Heat 3 of Round 1, where she finished in 3rd place with a score of 3.36. She then moved on to the repechage round, where she took 1st place in her heat with a score of 9.84, thus advancing to Round 2 of the main event. There, she finished 2nd in her heat with a score of 6.93, advancing to Round 3 where she finished in 4th place with a score of 3.50. This result eliminated her from the event, just one step away from the semifinals, and placed her 10th overall with 488 points.

Yuliana Campos started her heat in round 1 by taking 2nd place with 2.93, thus advancing directly to round 2, where she placed third in heat 3 with 6.00 and thus said goodbye to the event that left her in position #13 overall contributing 450 pts to the team.

Jerry Pastrana began his participation with a 3rd place in his round 1 heat with 7.00 and fell to the repechage round where he reached 2nd position with 10.26 and advanced to round 3 of the main event where he placed 3rd with 7.20, ending his participation in the event in position #13 overall with 450 pts.

The next category in the event was SUP Race, which consisted of only two semifinal heats, with the winners advancing to the final. Flavia Fernández represented Costa Rica in this category, competing in the second semifinal heat against seven other athletes. Flavia completed the course in 34 minutes and 13 seconds, finishing in 6th place. This wasn't enough to qualify for the final, placing her 11th overall with 475 points.

In the men's category, Rolando Herrera was the Costa Rican representative who competed in heat 2 of the semifinal and reached position #9 in the heat with a time of 28:43 minutes and position #17 in the event with 400 points.

The next competitors were Marcel Oliveira and Juan Bernini in the SUP Surf category. Marcel, with a score of 7.23, and Juan, with 4.70, finished in 4th place in their Round 1 heats, dropping to the repechage round. Juan managed to advance to Round 2 after finishing 2nd in his heat with a score of 8.50. In that round, he finished in 3rd place, failing to qualify for the event and placing 9th overall with 500 points. Marcel finished 3rd in the repechage round, also failing to qualify for the event and placing 13th overall with 450 points.

In the men's longboard category, Nosara local Dorian Torres was the Costa Rican with the best performance, achieving 7th place overall in the event with 555 points. Dorian's journey began in round 1 where he finished 2nd in his heat with 7.37, advancing to round 2 where he also secured 2nd place with 12.73. This allowed him to go directly to round 3 where he finished 3rd with 9.00.

The men's representation in longboard was completed by Anthony Flores who finished 3rd in his heat of round 1 with 6.94 falling to the repechage round, where he won the heat with a score of 9.70 going directly to round 2, leaving the 3rd place of the heat with 8.36 concluding his participation and leaving the position #13 of the overall event with 450 pts.

In the women's longboard category, the representation was led by the local from Playa Negra, Guanacaste, Lia Díaz, who had a good performance taking first place in heat in round 1 with a score of 11.16 and the same in round 2, winning the heat with 10.76 to reach directly to the semifinal where she obtained 4th place with a score of 3.67 which left her out of the event placing her in position #7 in the general table.

The shortboard category then began, represented by Lia Diaz and Mikela Castro in the women's division, and Sam Reidy, Tosh Talbot, and Cedrick McCrakin in the men's. In the women's category, both Lia (6.60) and Mikela (4.97) achieved second place in their Round 1 heats and advanced to Round 3, where they both finished third in their respective heats: Lia with a score of 7.33 and Mikela with 4.27. They finished in 17th place overall in the event, earning 400 points for the team.

In the men's category, Cedric McCrakin from Puerto Viejo was the first to enter the water in heat 4 of round 1 where he achieved a score of 8.83 to take 2nd place and advance to round 2 where he finished 4th with a score of 9.70, concluding his participation in position #25 with 360 pts.

Tosh Talbot, representing the South Pacific of Costa Rica, began his participation in heat 9 of round 1 and reached 2nd place with a score of 9.36, passing directly to round 2 where he also reached 2nd place in the heat with 14.27, which took him a few minutes later to round 3 where he finished third with a score of 12.50, concluding his participation placing him in the #9 position overall of the event with 500 points that add to the team.

And Sam Reidy, from Playa Dominical, was the Costa Rican with the best performance on the entire team, not only for advancing furthest in the shortboard category, but also for finishing first in his heats. Sam started by winning his Round 1 heat with a score of 11.93, where he faced current Olympian Alonso Correa. In Round 2, he won his heat again with a score of 13.40, and in Round 3, he repeated his first-place finish with 14.73, advancing directly to the semifinals. Unfortunately, he didn't advance to the finals, finishing third in his heat with a score of 11.67, behind Andres Echecopar (PER) with 15.50, Franco Radziunas (ARG) with 12.56, and Kai Gale Grani (PAN) with 10.07. This places Sam in 7th position in the overall event ranking.

In this way Costa Rica was placed in position #8 of the ranking by countries of the event with 7433 pts.

Written by: Yeison Jimenez Dittel