Kellogg's Nutri Grain National Surf League

On a bright and sunny Australia Day holiday, the Kellogg's Nutri Grain National Surf League took it's travelling circus down to the sleepy town of Ocean Grove in Victoria.

With loud music pumping, TV cameras and helicopters buzzing and a huge crowd doing the Mexican Wave, the sleepy seaside town soon became a hub of activity.

With the death of the Uncle Tobys Ironman Series two summers ago, the National Surf League has been able to begin to experiment with new formats to make races more attractive for the live and television-viewing audience.

Yesterday, I witnessed first-hand this new format, which has also seen the series taken to new locations, with yesterday's race being Ocean Grove's very first staging of the event.

Conditions were unusual for the majority of the competitors, hailing from Queensland and northern New South Wales, with an extremely cold blustery blowing right off the ocean, causing competitors to don heavy rain coats under the bright, sunny skies.

The surf was also unlike that encountered in round 1 of the series last weekend in Newcastle, where the sea was choppy and the waves fairly big. Today, conditions couldn't have been much easier for competitors, a light and even swell and smallish waves rendering the race a case of best man/woman wins, rather than riding on any good or bad luck from the sea. There was also the enormous beach front that had to be tackled on the run into and out of the sea, a run which totalled almost 200 metres, causing channel 7 commentators to joke that a drinks station would need to be set up to refresh exhausted competitors before they'd even gotten into the water.

Proceedings began at 10am yesterday morning, and throughout the morning and early afternoon qualifying events for the main ironman and ironwoman races were interspersed with various specialist events, drawing a wide array of sporting talent to Ocean Grove.

Specialist events held yesterday included flags, beach sprints, surf-ski racing, surf racing and kayaking.

During the surf and ski qualifying rounds, competitors were awarded points according to how they'd fared in both races, an average of the two was gained and then all totals were added up and the final squads determined.

A little after 1pm, the women's final began, and in a stunning early breakaway, Alexandra Headland's Kristy Munroe excelled on her ski league and opened and unassailable lead, coasting home easily in a shock result. The shocks weren't to stop there, with home-town favorite from Torquay, Naantali Marshall who surpassed all expectations and claiming second spot after a brilliant swim leg, the cash coming in all the more handy for Marshall now she has given away full-time work.

Coming in third place was Cronulla's Krystal Smith, managing to edge out a fast-finished Karla Gilbert, the defending series champ being relegated to fifth placing after a disastrous mishap in the ski leg.

The men's was a closer affair, it wasn't until well into the swim leg that former champion Zane Holmes, from Kawana Waters, was able to break away from the pack and assert his dominance on the race, making it two wins from two starts in season 2003. Second and third places were more down to luck, with a big wave guiding a pack home.

Youngster Shannon Eckstein, from Surfers Paradise, was able to beautifully manouvre himself on the wave to take out second place, while Swansea-Belmont's Josh Blair also showed some handy legwork to finish third. As was the case in the women's race, the defending series champion, Ky Hurst, again failed to fire, but did show some encouraging improvement from round 1, rising from ninth place then to finish in sixth today.

The success of today's event should ensure that this event returns to Ocean Grove at the very least for next year, and possibly for some time yet.

AJ Brady B.A.(Journalism)
PO Box 104, Ocean Grove, Vic. 3226
[email protected]