Maldives Open surf competition concludes at Adaaran Select Hudhuranfushi

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Wednesday evening saw the awarding ceremony of the second annual Maldives Open Surfing competition. The ceremony was held at Adaaran Select Hudhuranfushi resort. The competition took place at the surf break of the resort, Lhohis, where many other international surfing competitions have taken place.

Amongst the ceremony’s attendees last night were chief guest, Minister of Youth and Sports, Ahmed Zuhoor, Managing Director of Maldives Marketing and Public Relations Coorporation (MMPRC) Abdullah Ziyath, the President of the Maldives Body Boarding Association (MBBA) Abdullah Areef.

At the award-giving ceremony, Editor-in-Chief of Surf Time magazine, Matt George and his team gave away four prizes on behalf of the international surfers to the Maldivian surfers. The Rookie Of The Year for bodyboarding was awarded to Ashwan Ahmed, the second award was given to Ismail Rasheed, for the highest placing score/best performer, Ali Khushruwan was awarded the Body Boarding Ambassador Award, and lastly, the Best Ride/Best Barrel was awarded to Ahmed Aznil.

In the Women’s Open segment, third place was awarded to two surfers – Amy Kotch and Caity Griffin (USA), second place to Kai Johnson (Indonesia) and the winner was the defending champion Rina Kitazawa (Japan). In the Men’s Open segment, the winner was Yoni Klein (Israel). Second place was awarded to Randitya Rodi (Indonesia) while Garut Widiarta (Indonesia) and Made Adi Putra (Indonesia) came third.

In the body boarding segment, defending champion Ali Khsurwan (Maldives) remained the champion, putting Ali Javed (Maldives) in second place. Gavin Botha (South Africa) and Ahmed Arish Rasheed (Maldives) came third. The winners were awarded points and chosen by a panel of 6 judges out of which three were international, and the remaining three were local judges.

The competition saw forty-four international surfers, and twenty-five local surfers taking part this year. The Asian Surfing Championship (ASC) in collaboration with MBBA has taken to organising the Maldives Open Surfing competition, and this year marks the the second year of the competition. ASC and MMBA along with the Ministry of Tourism signed an MOU last year to hold this competition for the next five years. [/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]