This Year, Spoils Go to Survivors

They were searching for perfect waves and found a perfect ending: Mark Occhilupo and Rochelle Ballard joined hands and announced that they would split their winner-take-all checks equally with competitors on the Op Pro Boat Trip Challenge last June.

The unselfish gesture by Occhilupo and Ballard, who had won $65,000 and $37,500, respectively, capped nine days of prime surfing in the Mentawai Islands, an equatorial archipelago off Indonesia’s Sumatran coast that is regarded as home of the world’s best surf.

“This is the best contest I have ever been involved with,” Occhilupo said at the time. “I will never forget the surfing, the surfers and the beautiful vibe.”

Irvine’s Ocean Pacific Apparel Corp. and San Juan Capistrano-based Surfer Magazine will try to re-create those good feelings . . . without all that sharing.

The Op Pro Boat Trip Challenge will shove off June 11-23 in the Mentawais with a slightly different format.

It’s still a contest among 10 of the best professional surfers in the world--six men and four women--who will be ferried from break to break in the remote islands searching for the best waves.

But this year, in a nod to the popularity of the “Survivor” television series, the loser of each heat will be eliminated. The winner of each men’s heat will win $5,000 and the women’s heat winner will get $2,500. The overall winners will get an extra $30,000 and $20,000, respectively.

“This year we want to stress the fact that this isn’t just a surfing expedition,” said Sam George, editor of Surfer and contest co-director. “It is a competition and we have stressed that fact to each surfer who has signed to participate . . . that there is going to be a winner. What they do with the money after that, that is their own business.”

Serena Brooke, who finished third among the women last year, isn’t objecting to the new rules, but says the beauty of the event is that it’s nothing like other professional competitions.

It’s nice to get away from the standard contests, with their crowded beaches, judges’ towers and announcers booming out the time remaining in the heat, Brooke said. The Boat Trip Challenge is more like free surfing in paradise.

“It’s not even like a contest,” said Brooke, who splits time between her native Australia and Dana Point. “You are just having fun surfing perfect waves.”

Hitting the Road

Amber Neben of Irvine finished second in the road race at the U.S. Cycling Federation nationals Saturday in Redding, continuing her remarkable transformation from recreational mountain biker to professional.

Neben, 26, started racing mountain bikes in 1997 only months after being introduced to the sport. After early success in local races, Neben, who as Amber Parkinson was a cross-country, track and soccer standout at Orange Lutheran High, decided to pursue a career in cycling.

That meant postponing her pursuit of a PhD in physiology and biophysics at UC Irvine. She turned pro as a mountain biker last year and had solid if unspectacular results. She started dabbling in road racing and is making rapid progress. In March, she finished 10th in the six-day stage race at the Redlands Classic. Today and Saturday, she’ll be in Big Bear for the Snow Summit NORBA mountain bike series.

Taking Out the Trash

To celebrate National Trails Day, Trails4All is holding an “All-Canyons Cleanup” in the Santa Ana Mountains Saturday. In 1999, the effort yielded 118,000 pounds of trash from Trabuco Canyon alone, said Jim Meyer, Trails4All executive director.

Meyer said there was much less trash in the area in 2000, so his organization, with the help of co-sponsor Waste Management of Orange County, is turning its attention to other canyons--Blackstar, Silverado, Modjeska, Williams and Rose--as well.

For more information, call Meyer at (714) 834-3136.

Noteworthy

Dylan Rieder, a 13-year-old from Westminster, won the Winterfresh Amateur street skateboarding event Saturday at Vans Skatepark in Orange. Rieder beat more than 50 competitors and qualified for the finals Aug. 5 in New York. . . . A Cruising World/U.S. Sailing Safety at Sea seminar will be presented by the Orange Coast College School of Sailing and Seamanship. The daylong seminar will provide novice and experienced mariners with information and skills required for sailing offshore, handling safety equipment and emergencies at sea. Details: (949) 645-9412.