Surfing Competition Will Go On

Organizers of the Quiksilver Pro New York aren’t letting the destruction of a category 1 hurricane stand in the way of their plans.

The surfing company announced that the 15-day surf competition and festival, scheduled to start in Long Beach on Sept. 1, will go on as planned despite the beach erosion and damage Hurricane Irene wreaked on Ocean Beach Park late Saturday into Sunday.

"Surfing events have always required daily flexibility, so while Irene posed a larger than normal challenge, it was still well within the realm of what we prepare for when staging professional surfing events," Luke Watson, a spokesman for Quiksilver, said in a statement released Monday. "We chose the upcoming weeks to stage the event because it was hurricane season, offering the greatest potential for good surf. So planning for hurricanes was par for the course.”

Quiksilver said that workers will start to rebuild the competition’s staging areas on National and Edwards beaches, as well as part of the festival site on the Foundation Block at East Broadway and Edwards, which were disassembled last Thursday and Friday in anticipation of the storm.