In brief: Original young gun Slater Trout has continued his quest to return to the top of the sport, narrowly edging out his highly under-rated Infinity team mate Toby Cracknell and defending champion/former world number one Danny Ching to claim the 2017 Santa Monica Pier Paddle overall event title.
Slater and Toby split the wins between the long distance and beach race disciplines, with Slater taking the former before the Aussie out-sprinted him up the beach to claim the latter. With points tied, Slater got the nod on the tie-breaker (which weighted the result of the distance race) to take the biggest chunk of the $15,000 prize purse. → READ MORE