PASA Games Panama 2022 start at full speed

1st day of competition defined the semifinalists of the SUP Surf Men and Women categories. Finalists will be defined tomorrow
Day 1 Photo gallery HERE

With excellent conditions, today, Monday, August 8, the competitions of the 2022 Panama PASA Games, the fifteenth edition of the Pan American Surfing Games of the Pan American Surfing Association (PASA), began.

This Olympic-style surfing event is taking place in the waves of Playa Venao, in the province of Los Santos, Panama.

The athletes of the SUP Surf category (paddle board) were the ones who gave an exciting start to the race for the Medals and Pan American Champion trophy.

The discipline of SUP Surf consists of athletes taking and running waves standing up, propelling themselves with a paddle. While riding a wave, athletes must follow the judging criteria to achieve as many points as possible.

The criteria evaluated by the judges in this discipline are: commitment and degree of difficulty, progressive and innovative maneuvers, combination of major maneuvers, speed, strength and fluidity of the athlete’s movements and the use of rowing as a tool to achieve more radical maneuvers. .

Based on these elements, each athlete receives between 0.1 to 10 points, according to their performance on the wave, and they have up to 20 minutes to take their waves and at the end they will add their two highest individual wave scores.

Luiz Diniz from Brazil. Photo Michael Tweddle

In this PASA Games, from each competition Heat the first two places advance, while places three and four are eliminated from the event.

The SUP Surf Women category were the first to enter the water, the best athlete of the day was the Peruvian Vania Torres, who in her Heat added 14.67 points thanks to the sum of her two best waves: 7.76 and 7.00.

Torres beat Estela López from Chile in this Heat, who added a total of 5.53 points, and Kelly Prada from Venezuela, with a total of 1.93 points, with which she said goodbye to the event.

Other highlights of the day in this category were Aline Adisaka from Brazil with a total of 13.66 points and Lucía Cosoletto from Argentina with a total of 12.26 points.

The SUP Surf Women’s Semifinals were made up of:

Semi 1

Aline Adisaka (Brazil)
Lissette Prado (Ecuador)
Gabriela Sztamfater (Brazil)
Karen Jacobson (Mexico)

Semi 2

Vania Torres (Peru)
Lucia Cosoleto (Argentina)
Natalia de la Lama (Argentina)
Nimsay Garcia (Puerto Rico)

The colors of 17 flags from the Americas are present at Venao Beach. Photo Michael Tweddle.

In the SUP Surf Men category, Felipe Rodríguez from Mexico was the best athlete in the two rounds that were run in this category today.

Rodríguez added a total score of 16.67 points thanks to his outstanding individual waves of 9.00 and 7.67 points, and beat Leonardo Gimenes from Brazil who added 13.16 points and Maxi Prenski from Argentina who said goodbye to the event with a total score of 6.07.

Other highlights of the day were Tamil Martino from Peru who received a total of 13.6 points and Luis Diniz from Brazil who added 12.9 points.