Surfers compete for $20,000 cash prize in weekend tourney

Costa Rica will host surfers from all over the globe at the Quicksilver Open. The tournament begins Friday and runs through Sunday.

The tournament will be held at Santa Teresa Beach on the central Pacific coast province of Puntarenas where the surfers will compete for a $20,000 prize purse. The top three finishers will also receive a camera from Olympus, the tournament’s sponsor.

“We have confirmed people from 15 different countries, and we’re expecting more than 30 to be coming from outside of Costa Rica,” said Carlos Enrique Brenes of the Costa Rican Surf Federation. “In all we’ll be expecting about 80 total competitors.”

Among the confirmed participants are world-class surfer Clay Marzo and two-time Costa Rican national champion Gilbert Brown.

According to a press release from Quicksilver, the Costa Rica Open will be “the first professional international surfing tournament that Costa Rica has held in the past few years, where surfers from anywhere in the world are allowed to compete.”

For Brenes, the tournament holds many oppertunities not only for Costa Rican surfing but also Latin America.

“Hopefully now international surfers will want to come to Latin America to compete,” he said. “We want Costa Rica to be able to host most than just one or two international tournaments, and this will help.”