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OCEANSIDE -- A new face stood on top of the winner's podium at the 22nd World Bodysurfing Championships on Sunday. Thirteen-year-old Mila Finley of Mission Viejo beat out Sue Scatolini and
Nancy Chennell in the final women's event to win the Grand Championship at the Oceanside Pier.
She wasted no time getting started in the 15-minute final, earning points on
three of the first four rides in the heat, despite winning the Women's 12-17 division just 30 minutes earlier.
"I was tired, because I had to go right back out there," said
Finley, who won her age group in the 1997 event before coming up short in the Grand Championship. "I don't know how I did it --- I just went out there to have fun and try my
hardest. The current was pretty strong, so I was just trying not to end up way down there."
The youngster won her third championship in four attempts at the World
Championships. She began bodysurfing just two weeks before last year's event.
"Both my parents and my great-grandfather bodysurfed," Finley said. "I learned from them."
Her prize for winning the contest -- two round-trip tickets anywhere in the continental U.S. -- will give Finley an opportunity to do something else she has
never done before: fly in an airplane.
"I haven't ever been on a plane before," said Finley, who will enter the eighth grade this fall. "I feel great. I get to leave the
state and tell all of my friends what happened when I go back to school. All of them are rooting for me."
In the men's division, San Diego's Chris Lafferty beat out four former winners
en route to his first Grand Championship. Lafferty edged out the competition in part because of his unusual style for catching waves.
"I try to do some tricks the other guys can't do
too well to be a little
different" said Lafferty, who took to the water in a full-length red wetsuit. "On my underwater takeoffs I submerge like a dolphin and kick with my feet, then eventually pop up into the face of the wave. It's a fun trick to do and a hard trick to do. The red dive suit helps me stand out a little bit more, but it also keeps the sun off my white skin."
Lafferty first competed in the championships in 1979 before taking eight years
off. He won the 35-44 division in 1995, and his first stint in the Grand Championships gave him confidence for future competitions.
"This has been a goal of mine for a long time,
something I have been training for and looking for," Lafferty said. "When I won in '95 I knew I could compete.
I figured if I got the right waves and the right rides, at some point I could be a Grand Champion."
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