Competing in the World Life Saving Championships.

Surf Lifesavers

When you head down to the beach this summer, you'll probably notice the surf lifesavers checking that people are staying safe. You've got to be fit and a good swimmer to be a top lifesaver and in Australia we've got some of the best in the world. The surf life saving World Championships were held recently. So how did our young lifesavers do against kids from other countries? Sophia finds out.

SOPHIA THOMSON, REPORTER: Life saving is serious business! For many life savers, it's also a competitive sport. And this year, the Life Saving World Championships were here in Australia.

JORDAN CALDOW, LIFESAVER: To be able to compete against the best from 42 countries in the world will just be awesome 'cause I've only ever competed against athletes from Australia.

Jordan started learning life-saving skills when he was 10 years old and now at 19 he's the best beach sprinter in Australia with some big ambitions.

JORDAN CALDOW: I know it sounds corny, but to be the best I can be, I just want to make it as far as I can, I'm hoping that I can make a world championship or making an Olympic final or even better than that. But when you're competing against the best in the world there's a lot of hard work involved.

JORDAN CALDOW: I usually I train 6 nights a week but when I have competitions on Sundays it's 7 and most of the time we do our training on the grass, we don't do much on the sand because it can get you really tired and it's easier to concentrate on getting better on the grass.

Jordan Mercer has been into life saving since she was little, following in the footsteps of her iron man dad. Now at 18, she's a life-saving world record holder.

JORDAN MERCER, LIFESAVER: Well I'm two time Molokai to Owahu champion and the record holder as well, so that's a race over in Hawaii racing from Molokai island to Owahu and it takes around 5 and a half hours.

She also competes in sprinting, surf rescue and iron woman events and training for so many events takes a lot of hard work.

JORDAN MERCER: Every morning I'm swimming in the surf or in the pool and during the day I tend to swap between doing a run or hitting the gym or a bit of bikram yoga, keeping it fresh like that. Then in the afternoons we're down at the surf club and training with our group of friends on the skis, surf boards and also the iron woman so it comes down to sort of 4 training sessions a day.

And it hasn't always been easy mixing sport with school.

JORDAN MERCER: Yeah I think going through school it was fairly difficult, trying to juggle and I guess prioritise with what I wanted to do and sometimes my friends were going off to the movies and I knew I just needed to sort of stay committed and go to that training session and not stay up late at night, eat healthy food.

Commitment is something these guys know all about. They're the fittest, the strongest and the fastest and they come from all over the world, including some countries that might surprise you.

VOX 1: Huzzah, my name is Ryle, I'm from South Africa and I'm the beach flags world champion.

VOX 2: Hi, I'm Shun Nishiyama from Japan and I am here for the ocean man.

VOX 3: Hi, I'm Margot from Canada and I do the surf race.

VOX 4: I'm Doris Komen, from Kenya and I'm doing the pool events.

For the adult events, it was the Kiwis that came out on top, beating Australia in overall points for the first time in 15 years. But in the junior events the Aussies led the way.

Jordan and Jordie both won their events.

JORDAN CALDOW: It feels pretty awesome.. there's not really many words you can use besides that.

JORDAN MERCER: It is a dream come true, words honestly can't describe how excited I am right now.

They'll keep working to be the best, whether it's racing for gold or saving lives.

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