A teenage Australian surfing and life-saving champion was killed on Friday while competing in a national competition held in rough seas whipped up by a tropical cyclone.

Saxon Bird, a 19-year-old from Sydney, died during a heat of the Australian Surf Life Saving championships at Kurrawa Beach on the Gold Coast in Queensland amid strong winds and 2m (6ft) waves.

The teenager is believed to have been hit by his own surf ski and knocked unconscious during the under-19 event. Hundreds of competitors in rescue boats and on jet-skis scoured the water looking for Mr Bird after his ski washed ashore.

He was found by a fellow surf life-saver more than an hour later at another beach about 1km (half a mile) south of where the competition was being held. Medical staff tried to resuscitate him before Mr Bird was rushed to hospital, where he later died.

Described by Surf Life Saving Australia as one of its “rising stars”, Mr Bird had won a number of national titles over the past four years. He had been involved in the sport — which combines lifeguard services and competitive surfing — since the age of 8.

David Piper, the president of the Queenscliff Club where Mr Bird was a member, said everyone at the club had been saddened by his death: “He was not only one of the club’s most outstanding competitors, winning NSW and Australian gold medals, but also a fine, upstanding member of our community.

“We are a very close-knit, family-orientated club who compete together, socialise together and today we are grieving together.”

Life-saving coach, Damien Bailey, told a local television station: “He was an outstanding young man — boy, really — he just had everything.” Mr Bailey had competed at the event on Thursday and said conditions posed “one of the most dangerous situations I have ever been in”.

Two people had been treated for suspected spinal injuries during the surf carnival earlier this week where conditions were described as “carnage” by one competitor. The competition has since been suspended indefinitely. The decision to go ahead with the event during the rough conditions, caused by tropical cyclone Ului, is now the subject of a police investigation.

Robert Gatenby, a 15-year-old surf life-saver, drowned at the same beach during national titles held in tropical cyclone conditions in 1996. The boardwalk fronting the surf clubhouse is named in his honour.

Cyclone Ului was downgraded to a Category Two storm as it closed in on Australia’s east coast, churning up wild seas. Hundreds of tourists and residents were this week evacuated from islands on the Great Barrier Reef thought to be in the cyclone’s path.