Coco Ho downs Alessa Quizon to enter Final of Billabong Women’s Rio Pro – Surfing News
Hawaii’s Coco Ho confirmed her place in the Final of Billabong Women’s Rio Pro, the fifth of seven stops on the 2012 Association of Surfing Professionals (ASP) Women’s World Title Series, after getting the better of her fellow countryperson Alessa Quizon
in the first Semi-final that went down at the main event site of Barra da Tijuca in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on Sunday, May 13.
It turned out to be an intense contest, with both the surfers putting in a lot of effort to try and get hold of the title shot. However, the excellent run by Quizon eventually came to an end at the hands of her own compatriot.
“This has been an amazing event for me,” Quizon said. “I had nothing to lose and it’s been a great learning experience for me and I’m happy that I made it to the Semi-finals. I could tell that Coco [Ho] was getting the scores that she needed and I was looking
for one big score and I just didn’t find it. Sometimes it happens that way.”
While the third and fourth round of the competition went down in tricky one-to-two foot waves at the primary event site on Saturday, Sunday saw a significant improvement in the conditions. The peaky one-to-three foot waves offered much more potential scoring
opportunities, setting up a pretty nice stage for what was most likely going to be the final day of the competition.
The first Semi-final pitted Ho and Quizon against each other for the Finals’ spot. Both the surfers had been performing exceptionally well over the last few days despite facing the world’s best female surfers. While Ho had plenty of experience when it came
to competing at this level, the event wild-card entry Quizon was still new to the stage. However, she had done superbly in the early rounds of the competition and then went on to stamp her authority in the Quarter-finals to eventually make it into the Semi-finals.
As the first Semi-final got underway, the 18-year-old Quizon got off to a decent start. Going through a few average wave scores, she locked her first business-wave to post a 5.67 on the score-board. She continued to catch wave after wave while searching
for another decent score and eventually managed to add another 5.27 points to her account, thus reaching a heat-total of 10.94 points.
Ho got off to a slow start, but gradually built momentum to eventually break into a series of exquisite turns for a 7.33-point ride. In the dying minutes of the heat, she got hold of a 6.83-point wave to reach a heat-total of 14.16 points. The score proved
to be a decisive one, thus sealing the fate of the battle in her favour and carrying her through into the Semi-finals.
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