[28 Aug 2003]
Pre-event #1
The Nixon Surf Challenge, presented by Etnies will be hosted in the Basque city of San Sebastian September 12-14th, 2003. This international expression session hosts 24 surfers who will compete in this invitation only event. A departure from the bigger contests, The Surf Challenge focuses on free surfing and is judged by the surfers themselves. Past attendees include Bruce Irons, Nathan Fletcher, Saxon Boucher, Ozzie Wright, Sunny Garcia. For more information contact Henning Erlandsen, Nixon Europe, henning@nixoneurope.com

[Fri 12]
No waves all summer and now one of the nicest days since – that captures the quality of this day. The atmosphere was mellow and the surfing very impressive, to say the least. Not according to plan, the late afternoon brought on too good conditions to finish for the day. The waves still coming in strong, the two loser heats of 5 each were continued so that the surfing didn’t stop before 6:30 pm. We ended up not missing a thing: from floaters to 360 arials – today we’ve seen it all. Coming to a close with a chilled BBQ by the beach we are very excited to see the next level of surfing tomorrow on day 2.

 [Sun 14]
What a final !!! – due to the amazing surfing that was unfolding right in front of our eyes we decided to change the heat around so that we could have 4 surfers in the finals. Miky Picon, Fredo Robin, Tiago Pires and Jason Griffith showed all the fun in surfing with their powerful, individual and impressive styles. The weather kept up wonderfully and a fair relaxed crowd of beachers and surfers gathered at the beach. The judging was added up by two more judges who made it even clearer who deserved to win, almost win and pretty damn closely win this all for the fun competition.
In the end the winners were ranked as follows:
1. Miky Picon
2. Fredo Robin
3. Tiago Pires
4. Jason Griffith
As we speak, the sunset is going down and champaign-drenched surfers chill out and get ready for the final party of the Nixon Surf Challenge 2003.
Thanks to everyone. We had the best time.