Chad du Toit, aged 16.
The little terror of New Pier is growing up fast and is set to be one of the country’s new surf stars.  Chad has won too many junior events to even start listing and has been on the winner’s podium in these junior events for the last 4 years.  Small for his age, he has developed a positional style of surfing with more flow and less grunt behind it.  Chad has been filling out recently and is throwing buckets of spray and gouging turns.

Having such a successful career whilst still so young has its obvious pitfalls, but with Jason Ribbink and Elton Fursman always watching over Chad and his ever supportive mom, Tracy, at every event with him, Chad is set to go far.  With progressive surfing of utmost importance to the kid, as the new wave of South African surfers starts assuming their positions in the competitive hierarchy, Chad will be sitting comfortably at the top of the pile.

Travis ‘Trent’ Logie, age 27

It all went down at that 5-Star in France in 2004.  The waves were small left-hand beachbreak waves, the type that Travis has surfed in the bowls of the Durban piers all his life.  He decimated his competitors in every heat in front of a cheering South African crew as he secured his spot on the 2005 WCT with the victory.  But the story was just starting.

Trent showed the world that he is a force to be reckoned with during his first year on the WCT, and shut up all the people who said that he was a small-wave wonder.  He took off deep on thick Teahupoo monsters in the event, and the surfing world stood up and took notice.  He repeated this at Cloudbreak at Tavarua and then went on to focus on the job at hand by smashing Kelly Slater in a crucial heat in Brazil, securing his 2006 WCT slot and putting Slater’s 2005 world title in serious jeopardy.  “I’ve worked so long and hard to get where I am right now,” said Trent after his Slater victory.  “No matter what the situation and what’s going on around me, I paddle out in every heat with one thing in mind: to win.”

Photogenic, friendly, and popular amongst his peers, Trent is another surfer with a huge following and always gets plenty of ink in the surf mags.