British Bodyboard Chairman Rich Hall announced today that the Auto-Sleepers British Bodyboard Tour has had to be officially curtailed from 5 events down to 4. He explained the circumstances:

“A combination of events outside of our control has forced us to withdraw an event from the tour schedule this year. As most people will know, the Sorted Festival competition was postponed due to surf conditions and the Greenaway Pro was postponed until 2012 just recently. This left us with a gap in the event calendar and we have been exploring a number of different options to fill the space”.

He continued: “We have had discussions with two other organisations about piggy-backing an existing event, and while this has led to some exciting developments for the 2012 tour it hasn’t resulted in any practical options for 2011”.

The timescale in which the 2011 tour has to be completed has been compressed by the International Surfing Association’s announcement last week that the World Bodyboard Games will be held at the end of November in Gran Canaria. This means that in order to enter a team, secure accommodation, flights and training time, the 2011 British representatives need to be decided as soon as is practicable.

Rich went on to clarify the situation; “because of the ISA announcement and the postponements we’ve experienced this year, with the resources available to us it simply hasn’t been possible to shoehorn an additional BBC organised event into the schedule. As it is we still have 2 events to run (at Constantine and Porthtowan) and with fall-back dates there just isn’t the time to organise an additional competition”.

“Whilst reducing the tour from 5 events to 4 is far from our first choice option, all the competitors are still able to drop one event, and their top 3 scores will count towards their final position. This is in accordance with the scoring changes we announced at the start of the 2011 tour”.

All tour competitors should keep a close eye on the BBC website britishbodyboardclub.co.uk for further announcements. Any enquiries should be directed to: [email protected]