Another season has come and gone in South Africa.  We just held our South African Nationals in Bloemfontein on the Vaal river. The tournament started on Easter Friday and finished on the Saturday with awards and prize giving on the Saturday evening .

Well it did not run as smooth as that from the start . We had left Pretoria at about 4pm to make the 5 hour drive to Bloemfontein (350 miles) when about 2 hours away from Bloemfontein, I received a phone call from the organizers and these were the words: "Stop, turn back, we have a problem.  The tournament boat is overheating!"  My words "@#$%^&*! *&^%$#@!!!" So we turned back to fetch the Raven that had been used in the Junior Worlds in April 2005 and the boat that now holds both slalom world records.  To make a long story short, we got back to Bloem at about two in the morning.

The tournament started at 8am, and as winter has arrived early, we had to break frost before we started. Slalom was up 1st and a lot of good scores were set by most of the juniors.  10 year old Laura 8.8, Garth Strydom 13.7 and Heinrich equalling his world record 19.2 (skiing with a bad knee ) in the Open Division Andre chased Heinrich's score and posted a 19.0 . 

We then went to tricks and in not the most ideal conditions.  We had a lot of wash, but we still got good scores from the juniors. Pascal Bowens 1740 (12 years), Garth Strydom 2750 (13 years) and Heinrich 7480 missing a couple of his new tricks that he is working on for the worlds.  Andre came up with a score of 8280 also missing a couple of big tricks.  So all I can say watch out the rest of the world.  Expect big scores from these 2 guys as not one of them skied out both there new passes.  I am involved with both of them and can attest that they can both break 10000 points.  So a big winter training session is waiting for both of them and the whole South African team in preparation for the Worlds in September. 

Jump followed Tricks, and with very washy conditions, most the jumpers just recorded jumps to get overall scores.  Nobody jumped near their PBs.  The good news was that South Africa got our next invert jumper in Garth Strydom who landed his 1st ever long line jump inverted .

All in all a great tournament well organized by Jonathan and Sharon with there whole crew .

After the tournament was done, I called the skiers together and put together the 1st ever barefoot endurance race to be held in South Africa.  We had 2 identical Raves lined up with 3 skiers on each team.  My team consisted of Heinrich , Zane , Emile.  Andres de Villier's team consisted of Garth, Mannie, and Matthew.  It was a very short race of only 10 miles and we had only one rule.  All 3 skiers had to ski at least once . So we were off . The result of the 1st race was my team winning by about 40 seconds.  The guys really enjoyed it.  This was just a little appetizer for the 1st ever BIG RACE that will be held on the 17th of June in the middle of winter.  We're calling it the ICE BLOCK. We have already have 6 teams entered with 2 or 3 more to follow.  The Ice Block will be a 35 mile race and will have a lot of media coverage.  We already have our sights set on fielding a South African Team at the 1st BFC Cup Series Race in Dallas, Texas a week after the Worlds on Sept 23.  We're eager to see how our racers stack up against the best racers in the world.  Look out Cup Racers, we may just surprise you.

Back to the SA Nationals.  Prize giving was held in a nicely set up marquee.  The overall champs were crowned.  Andre de Villiers being crowned S.A. Open Champion for the 3rd time, and Heinrich Sam the Junior Champion for the 5th time. Laura Bowens was Junior B B champ for the 1st time and Sara Lebagang the Lady's Champion.  Sara is the only competing black barefoot skier in the world at the age of 13.  We need more skiers like her.

After the prize giving, the kids enjoyed themselves and had fun making a lot of noise and dancing till it just got too cold.

See you all at the Worlds,

Eugene Sam

Stay tuned to BarefootCentral.com for more information on Ice Block Challenge.