Steven Sawyer and Crystal Hulett win Tigers Milk Winter Classic Longboard Titles

In one of the best 25 minutes of contest surfing seen at Muizenberg in many years, Steven Sawyer of Jeffrey's Bay produced two 9 plus point rides in the Final of the WSL Speciality Men's Longboard division at the 2018 Tigers Milk Winter Classic yesterday (Sunday June 10th) to take the title and the R6000 prize purse.

Two time Tigers Milk Champion Matthew Moir posted a 9.65 ride in the epic final, the highest score of the contest, but needed a strong back up ride to take his third title. When the siren sounded Moir had to settle for second ahead of Michael Hill, who also scored a plus 9 point ride in the final. Local longboarder, Nobel de Castro, a finalist last year, placed fourth.

In the WSL Speciality Women's final, talented Seal Point longboarder Crystal Hulett beat defending champion Simone Robb to take gold and the R6000 winner's purse. Taryn King was third and 2018 National Longboard team member Christy Gilmour took fourth place.

Christy's father, Grant, took the Over 40 Longboard title ahead of Chris Heath who fought hard but had to settle for second place. Chris Poseman came third and Whaldo de Kock came fourth.

Meanwhile down in Uluwatu, Johanne Defay of France and Willian Cardoso from Brazil, won through a marathon event, the make-up event for Stop No. 3 on the World Surf League (WSL) Championship Tour (CT) on Bali's Bukit Peninsula. The iconic lefthander dished up pumping 4-to-6 foot (1.4 - 2 metre) waves for the Final day of competition that started running just after sunrise and saw the final siren sound moments before the sunset.

2018 CT Rookie Cardoso was the in-form surfer of the event, posting massive scores and dominating performances over both days of competition. The Final was no different as he came up against World Title threat Julian Wilson (AUS). Wilson kept busy in the Final, catching a number of waves, but struggled to find anything of substance, while the Brazilian picked off set waves and demolished them to post a 15.57 (out of a possible 20).

The women's Final was an all-time, goofy versus natural-footer battle as Defay came up against 2018's most consistent surfer, Tatiana Weston-Webb of Brazil, at the Uluwatu racetrack. Weston-Webb looked in control of the 35-minute Final as Defay struggled to post the score she needed to take the lead. In the final minute, Defay found a set and went to work, narrowly flying past Weston-Webb by just 0.46 points, to take her first CT win since the Fiji Pro in 2016. With the third CT victory of her career, Defay moves into 5th place on the Jeep Leaderboard.