The competition involves water events such as ocean swim, ski paddle, and board races as well as beach events including flags, a 2km run and 100m sprints.
The Bude masters team has a very strong team spirit — this supportive competitive team had already become the national men and women lifesaving champions at Exmouth in August. However, the World Championships is a much larger and physically strenuous event, including athletes from Argentina, Australia, Canada, USA among others.
On the first day of competition, the brown North Sea, with its messy surf, did not look remotely inviting. No wetsuits were allowed in the first race of the day, the Ocean Swim Race. This was not the easiest start to world level competition.
Mel, still recovering from salmonella poisoning, didn’t have much energy to push as hard as she would have liked in this her favourite event, just finishing out of the top ten, although Mel and the sprint relay team finished seventh overall later on in the day.
Simon made a couple of water finals. His efforts in qualifying for his sprint final against a very strong all Australian contingent where he finished fifth, was particularly impressive at the end of a very long day.
The second day of competitions again started early on the beach, where stewarding starts at 7.30am.
The beach rescues were the first event of the day. This is where one person swims out to the buoy, they signal for their partner who races out on a board, they then both paddle back to the beach on the board.
Both Simon and Mel’s pairs made the finals, although Mel feels her dramatic underwater exit on to the beach wasn’t the ideal finish to a race.
This event saw Bude achieve its first world champions, so congratulations have been extended to Nicola Hammond (Simon’s wife) and Liz Kay, both parents of current Budehaven students.
The second day involves lots of water relays completed in teams of three. These include the ocean race, ski relay, board relay and taplin (swim, ski, paddle).
This is where Budehaven teachers achieved their hard-fought medals. Simon became a world champion alongside Tim Moyle and Mini Fry (again both parents of current Budehaven students) in the ski relay.
Mel achieved a silver in the board relay and a bronze in the ocean race (both with Jayney Henwood and Liz Kay) as well as a bronze in the taplin relay (with Nic Hammond and Jayney Henwood).
The last events of the day were beach events, the 2km run, and beach flags. The 2km race is not the nicest event especially when running on very soft sand. However, both Mel and Simon made the top ten in their categories, so a very good end to a very tiring two days of competition.
Thanks were expressed to Budehaven School for allowing both Simon and Mel the opportunity to compete in the Masters World Surf Lifesaving competition, and also to Bude SLSC for its organisation and support.
A large number of Budehaven students and parents are involved in surf lifesaving.
Mel and Simon said: “The message is: students, aim high, for one day you could also have the honour of representing your club at a world competition. It’s such a fantastic experience and one not to be missed!”