First it was Barbados. Now even the Worlds aren’t enough for Chelsea Tuach.
Fresh from her historic third-place showing at the HD World Junior Championships in Brazil, the country’s best ever female surfer says she isn’t settling for that performance as she has her eyes on the sport’s prestigious World Tour.
The teenager revealed her latest goal yesterday after returning home from the Junior Worlds at Joaquina Beach in Florianopolis, in South America’s largest country.
“It’s been a great year and I was focusing on the juniors but right now I’m going to keep training as hard as I can because it doesn’t stop here,” said Tuach.
“I just have to push myself more and more because next year I’m going to be up against a higher level of girls. It’s going to be harder contests, more travelling and harder girls, so I can’t wait and I’m feeling great.
“I’ve been working with my coach Mike Lamm and that’s helped a lot and I’ve been working with my shaper Derrick Camacho and he has a ton of boards that have really been feeling great.
“The equipment was there, the coaching was there and I was just really motivated to do well this year. I’m happy that I got this far and I can’t wait for next year,” she added.
The third-place effort at the Junior Worlds – Barbados’ first medal at that level – was just the cap of a wildly successful year for the teenage prodigy, who became the first Bajan surfer to win an Association of Surfing Professionals (ASP) three-star junior pro event after taking the ROXY Pro in Cocoa Beach, Florida, in March.
Two months later the 17-year-old was back at it again, capturing the country’s first medal at the International Surfing Association (ISA) World Junior Surfing Championships to earn a spot the just concluded Junior World Championships.
And it was there that Tuach really set the world ablaze, easily qualifying from the opening round before stunning World Championship Tour surfer and top seed Bianca Buitendag of South Africa in their quarter-final showdown.
“I wanted to win for sure but kind of just took every heat at a time and see how far I could go, but seeing that I had a draw with Bianca Buitendag in the quarter-finals, I didn’t go into that heat with any expectations,” explained Tuach.
“It was just such a great experience. It was my first time to that part of Brazil and it was really fun but it was a little difficult because it was colder than I expected. All the girls were really, really good and it definitely pushed my surfing.”
Tuach next turns her attention to Isabela, Puerto Rico, where she will compete in the Association of Surfing Professionals of Puerto Rico Open Women’s Pro event next week before returning home for the much-hyped Independence Pro at the Soup Bowl.
“This year for the first time we’re doing a junior pro in Barbados, so I’m so excited to do a contest like that at home because usually I have to travel all over the world. But I am going to be in front my home crowd and they haven’t really seen me in such a competition,” said Tuach.
