Now that’s what a surf competition should look like! Essentially running simultaneously with the dud that was the Hang Loose Santa Catarina Pro, the 25th running of the Xcel Pro at Sunset Beach was everything you could hope for in an event. Soon to be retired Pancho Sullivan overcame a stacked final heat on his way to a huge victory in what was all-time conditions at Sunset Beach.

Kamalei Alexander (2nd), Danny Fuller (3rd), and Makua Rothman (4th) rounded out the final heat and each of the Hawaii surfers lit up the unreral 6-10 northwest swell. However Pancho opened up the heat with an event-high score of 9.77 and never looked back. With Sunset in full form for the final, Sullivan’s wealth of knowledge of the wave he was raised on proved to be too much for the other surfers to overcome. “I held back and paddled a little deeper,” Sullivan said after the winner’s ceremony on the beach, on his strategy to move outside of Sunset’s west peak. “The third [9.77] wave of the set really helped me build momentum.”

Winning at Sunset is especially rewarding for Sullivan as he has publicly stated that he will retire from the 2008 ASP World Tour at the end of the season. It’s been a brutal year on the WCT for Pancho, as well as the rest of the Hawaii contingent, but this victory at Sunset does a lot more to remedy that than a win in the meager beach break featured by the Hang Loose Pro ever could have.

Congratulations Pancho Sullivan, winner of the 2008 Xcel Pro Presented by Honolua!

2008 Xcel Pro Presented by Honolua Final Results
1. Pancho Sullivan $10,000 (1,500 pts)
2. Kamalei Alexander $5,000 (1,313 pts)
3. Danny Fuller $3,000 (1,125 pts)
4. Makua Rothman $2,400 (1,069 pts)

Tags: Xcel

Posted by Shaun on Saturday, November 8th, 2008 in Surfing.

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