LA LIB­ER­TAD, El Sal­vador – In a show­case of glob­al surf­ing tal­ent at the ISA World Surf­ing Games, the Caribbean na­tions made their pres­ence known, with Team Bar­ba­dos lead­ing the re­gion­al charge by se­cur­ing 35th place over­all.

The nine-day-long com­pe­ti­tion, which drew the world’s best surfers to the leg­endary waves of El Sun­zal and La Bo­cana in Surf City, El Sal­vador, saw Aus­tralia claim the cov­et­ed team gold medal, fol­lowed by Pe­ru with sil­ver and Spain with bronze. France round­ed out the top four, tak­ing the cop­per medal.

Amidst the pow­er­house na­tions, the Caribbean teams bat­tled fierce­ly. Bar­ba­dos emerged as the top-placed team from the re­gion, ac­cu­mu­lat­ing a to­tal of 660 points.

Their cam­paign was high­light­ed by a stel­lar per­for­mance from surfer Tom­ma­so Layson, who elec­tri­fied the event in Round 2.

Layson post­ed one of the high­est sin­gle-wave scores of the en­tire com­pe­ti­tion, an ex­cel­lent 8.83, in Heat 19, show­cas­ing the high-cal­i­bre po­ten­tial with­in the Caribbean surf­ing com­mu­ni­ty.

The fi­nal team stand­ings for the oth­er Caribbean na­tions saw Ja­maica fin­ish in 49th place with 261 points. The British Vir­gin Is­lands were close be­hind in 56th (183 points), with the Ba­hamas in 57th (167 points) and Trinidad & To­ba­go in 60th (114 points).

In in­di­vid­ual com­pe­ti­tion, Aus­tralia’s Dane Hen­ry rode to gold in the Men’s di­vi­sion, while France’s Kauli Vaast earned sil­ver and an­oth­er Aus­tralian, Mor­gan Cibil­ic, took bronze.

The Women’s di­vi­sion was won by Spain’s Janire Gon­za­lez-Etx­abar­ri, with Por­tu­gal’s Yolan­da Hop­kins se­cur­ing sil­ver and Aus­tralia’s Sal­ly Fitzgib­bons grab­bing bronze.

CMC