Chelsea Tuach continues to create history in a sport that she has dedicated the past seventeen years to. 
The recently concluded Central American and Caribbean Games held in El Salvador saw Chelsea bring home the first ever Gold Medal in surfing. Chelsea was dominant in all her heats with her powerful, fluid forehand surfing, toping all the statistics for the highest wave scores of the Women’s Shortboard Division and the highest heat totals. 
Her competitive journey began at age ten (10) when she became the youngest surfer to ever represent Barbados on a National Team when she competed in the Under 18 Girls’ Division at the International Surfing Association’s World Junior Surfing Championships held in Maresias, Brazil in 2006. She made it through a few rounds, impressing the crowd with her fearlessness on the sizeable waves on offer. 
At age 13 she was crowned the Caribbean Open Women’s Champion and by 14 she won her first Pro event outside
of the Caribbean when she was crowned the Women’s Champion at the 25th Annual NKM Pro-Am surf contest held in Cocoa Beach, Florida. 
In 2013, she realized one of her dreams - winning Barbados’ first medal at the International Surfing Association’s World Junior Surfing Championships in Nicaragua. She made history again in 2015, winning another medal for Barbados, this time in the Open Women’s Division at the ISA’s World Surfing Games. 
At age 16, with 8 CXCs under her belt, she headed to California, determined to make her mark first on the NSSA circuit, surfing against the best Under 21 girls from the USA and then on the ASP Pro Junior circuit. By December, 2012 she was at the top of the NSSA Open Women’s ratings for the South West region and in January 2013 she surfed in her first Association of Surfing Professionals (ASP) Pro Junior event. By September, 2013 she was crowned the North American Pro Junior Women’s Champion and became the first Caribbean surfer to qualify for the ASP World Junior Surfing Championships which is open only to the top 2 female surfers from each of the 7 surf regions. She made the semi-final and achieved an international world junior ranking of 3rd. 
Chelsea continued her impressive performance on the World Surf League’s Junior circuit ending the 2014 season runner up and the 2015 season as overall champion once again. She is still the only Caribbean surfer to have achieved this feat, not once, but twice. 
Chelsea’s campaign on the World Surf League’s World Qualification Series, which started in 2014, has been equally impressive. She ended her first year ranked 25th inthe world which at the time represented the highest ranking of a Barbadian surfer, and she was also the second highest ranked female surfer from the North American region. 
Chelsea ended her 2015 campaign on the World Surf League’s (WSL) Women’s World Qualification series with a career high ranking of 4th in the world after facing over 250 of the world’s top professional surfers in contests around the world. She was crowned the Women’s Champion at the WSL 6000 Pantín Classic held in Galicia, Spain. This remains the greatest achievements of Chelsea’s surfing career and the greatest achievement of a Caribbean surfer as, with the 6000 points she earned, she qualified for the 2016 WSL World Championship Tour. She is the first and only surfer, not only from Barbados, but from the entire Caribbean region to achieve this honour. 
Chelsea continues to excel on the international scene, going where no other Caribbean surfer has gone before and forging the way for future generations. She won the 2017 Shoe City Pro, a WSL 1000 event in January 2017 (the first Barbadian to
win a WSL 1000 event). She won the Martinique Surf Pro in March 2018, a WSL 3000 event, delighting her Caribbean fans as this event had never been won by a Caribbean surfer. Later that year, she again created history, winning a silver medal at the Pan American Surfing Games held in Peru. In 2019, she won the South Africa Open of Surfing, another WSL 3000 event, again becoming the first and only Caribbean surfer to win an event on the African continent. Later that year, she made it all the way to third place at the WSL 10,000 event in Spain and ended with a world ranking of 12. 
In 2022, she realized another dream, winning a WSL 3000 event at home when she was crowned Women’s Champion at the Barbados Surf Pro. She remains the only Caribbean surfer to have topped the podium in WSL 3000 and 6000 events. 
Now Chelsea’s focus is more on winning medals for Barbados and achieving her Olympic dream than on her professional career. Her focus on this goal and her determination have seen her win a silver medal for Barbados at the inaugural CAC Beach Games held in
Santa Marta, Colombia last November, another silver
medal at the Pan American Surfing Championships held in Santa Catalina, Panama in April this year and her recent Gold Medal at the 2023 CAC Games. Following this achievement, Chelsea had this to say: “It has been a goal and a dream of mine to stand on the podium while my National Anthem plays. It is such an epic feeling to have achieved this.” 
Chelsea’s outstanding performance on the international stage has secured her one of the sixteen (16) spots in Shortboard surfing and the only one allotted to Barbados for the Pan American Games to be held in Santiago, Chile in November this year. Chelsea is currently training in Australia with the goal of securing yet another gold medal for Barbados at these Games and a spot in the 2024 Paris Olympics. 
Kudos to this amazing athlete for her dedication to her sport, her many historic accomplishments and for inspiring other young athletes to believe in their dreams.