Surf Lifesaving: Monster performance from Beattie

Mount Monster winner Max Beattie (left) and Cory Taylor finished the epic race with the same time of 2:23.07. Photo / Andrew Warner

The four-legged 25km Mount Monster had one of the closest sprint finishes in recent endurance racing history.

Max Beattie claimed his first Mount Monster title in dramatic fashion, howling with delight and thrusting his fist in the air as he burned past desperately unlucky defending champion Cory Taylor to win by a mere metre after more than two hours of intense racing.

The fickle nature of the sport was in evidence for all to see and hear - Taylor fans on the beach could be heard expressing disappointment their charge's board length lead coming into the beach was nullfied by a flat patch.

Beattie (Omanu) timed his transition beautifully, giving him all the edge he needed to reach the turn on the short run to the line with a lead.

The finish line was not the end of the drama however, with a five-minute penalty incurred for missing a flag during the swim leg leaving an anxious wait for Beattie and Taylor.

Although 17-year-old Gisborne schoolboy Matt Scott finished inside the 5 minutes, the next open male was Mount local Sam Shergold, an agonising 32secs adrift of Beattie and Taylor's altered time of 2h23m07s.

"I'm exhausted, to have a race like that finish with a sprint on the beach isn't fair on either me or Cory," Beattie said after crossing the line to a wild scene involving talk of protesting the penalty.

"I thought I nearly let Cory get away on the way into the beach.

"He put about a board length into me and nearly got down a little runner so I'm thanking my lucky stars I got one up to him. I knew I had a pretty good line so I definitely thought about that on the way in.

"It turned into less of a race and probably more teamwork over the last 6km board leg. We knew we had to put a buffer into that five minutes and we knew we had to share the workload.

"We train together three times a day, six days a week and we are really good mates. We knew each other's strengths and weaknesses and going into the race we knew it was going to be that way anyway.

"The Mount Monster has been something that has been on my mind since I came second last year so it was nice to be able to tick that one off."