Chisholm stoked with board’s role in world title

A LOCAL surfboard shaper has played an integral in helping an American surfer win her third WSL World Longboard Title in Malibu, California.

South Coast Surfboards craftsman Ian Chisholm said he was “absolutely chuffed” to have Soleil Errico take out the WSL Finals event last week riding a custom South Coast Surfboards Slasher Low Pro model.

The board has been a work in progress for nearly a decade and refined with the assistance of longboarding legend CJ Nelson.

Mr Chisolm said the plan had been for Errico to ride the models after the competition, however Nelson, her coach, pulled the trigger earlier on the transition to the new model.

“We’d made some plans during Bells for her to ride plenty of these boards after the competition season was done, but CJ and her just went for it and she ended up winning on one of them!

“No one told me she would be riding it, it was a bit of a curveball, but when they rang me, it was amazing to just see how happy they were with it.

“She would only have been on them for a few days before the finals event in Malibu and just rode one of them non-stop throughout the competition and in her free surfs.

“Soleil has been putting in countless hours to get to this point.

“It was pretty exciting, and I was very taken back. I’ve never had anyone win a world title on one of my boards.

“You can’t get much better than that.”

Mr Chisolm said the Slasher Low Pro would be hitting the shelves in the company’s Torquay showroom very soon.

“We’ve made some tweaks to it and made a board that really fits the current WSL criteria to win events.

“It’s a board that can be pushed hard with nose-riding and rail game.

“We’ve pulled the tail in a bit and made some different concaves.

“Even though it looks quite similar, we’ve done some big changes to it.

“These are exciting times, and we’ve definitely got plenty more exciting things to come.”