Sri Lanka’s Lakshitha Madushan became the King of the Wave among the men while Nikita Rob was the comfortable winner of the Queen of the Wave title at the Red Bull Ride My Wave surfing contest held at the Hikkaduwa main surf point on January 29 and 30.
Madushan obtained a score of 13.8 points while Nikita Rob won it for the third consecutive year by collecting a whopping 11.5 points to make history.
 Nikita Rob |
Sachin Tharaka scoring 12.4 points became first runner-up while Steeve Seilly with 10.6 points was the second runner-up in the men’s category.
Cameroon Heinamann became first runner-up with 5.6 points while Krõõt Laesson scoring 4.9 points was the second runner-up in the women’s category.
This was the sixth edition of the Red Bull Ride My Wave event and was contested by surfers from over 25 countries including Austria, Australia, Belgium, Germany, Estonia, France, the UK, Israel, the Netherlands, Russia, Sweden, USA and South Africa.
This year saw 96 heats worked out for the men’s title with 81 locals and foreign male participants. Ten’s qualifying round Two had 12 heats with 45 participants. Round three consisted of six heats with 18 participants and 12 qualified for the quarter-finals.
Six surfers participated in the semi-finals and four competed for the title of King of the Wave in the final.
The women’s first qualifying round had right heats with 23 participants.
The quarter-finals comprised four heats with 16 participants and the semi-finals had two heats with eight participants. Finally four competed for the title of Queen of the Wave.
The main objective of the event was to give wings for local talent to springboard into the global arena.
The presentation of awards to the men’s winners were made by Maldivian team manager Nahu, Red Bull Ride My Wave head judge Lahiru Withanage and contest director Sandika Thushara.
The awards were presented for the women winners by tabulators Himashi Wathsala, Hiruni Wathsala and Oshi Herath respectively. (TBR)