Salvadorans Alvarado, Portillo and Salinas advanced in the Surf City El Salvador ISA World Longboard Championship 2024 – – 2024-04-24 11:04:48

The first day of competitions of the Surf City El Salvador ISA World Longboard Championship 2024, which takes place in El Sunzal, left three of the four Salvadorans in contention classified for the second round.

Amado de Jesús Alvarado and Sindy Portillo, beneficiaries of the Effort and Glory Program, and Henry Salinas fulfilled their respective heats and tomorrow they will fight to continue advancing in the contest. Claudia Tamacas was the only national who will not continue in the main bracket and will have to compete in the repechage.

Alvarado finished in second place in heat 16 with a score of 9.40, enough to advance to the second round. The first place in that group went to the Brazilian Rodrigo Saphier (12.80), while the Colombian Leonardo Herrera was third with 5.93.

In the second phase, Alvarado will compete in heat 7 against Martin Coret (France), Antonio Dantas (Portugal) and Sam Christianson (South Africa).

While Henry Salinas, the first Salvadoran to see action at the start of the competitions, shared heat 9 with the Brazilian Carlos Bahía, silver medalist in the previous edition of this competition, and Nicolás Ayala, from Colombia.

With a solid start, with a wave of 6.17 points, the native of El Sunzal put pressure on his rivals. However, Bahía’s response was forceful and with this he managed to take first place in the heat (14.50 points), relegating the Salvadoran to second place, who finished with 10.37.

Both Bahía and Salinas advanced to the next round, where the national team will compete in heat 6 against the Englishman Ben Howey, the Peruvian Sebastián Cárdenas and the American Chase Lieder. While the Brazilian is in heat 5 with the Uruguayan Julian Schweizer, Korean Dongkyum Kim and the Danish Alexander Wolthers.

In the women’s branch, Sindy Portillo finished second in heat 6 with a score of 10.17, only surpassed by the American Rachel Tilly, who registered 15.00 points and one of the best scored waves in the competition (7.83)

Tilly was in El Salvador last year when this same competition took place, but on that occasion the American was left out of the water commentating for the official ISA broadcast. Now, the surfer assures that this experience gave her the tools to compete in the 2024 edition.

“I am very happy to be here and how my first day went. Last year I learned a lot about what the waves are like here and how everything happens in there. I hadn’t realized that, but I think it helped me to be on the outside seeing everything that was happening,” Tilly stated.

Portillo will make up heat 3 of the second round, where she will compete with Ruby Knox (Ireland), Olivia Stokes (Canada) and Gaby Paul (New Zealand).

For her part, Salvadoran Claudia Tamacas added 3.93 points and finished in last place in the women’s heat 2 and was left out of the main bracket. However, the national team will remain in contention in the repechage, where she will face Lu Kuan Hsuan, from Chinese Taipei, and one more rival.