Coco Ho overcomes Stephanie Gilmore to clinch Billabong Women’s Rio Pro Semi-finals spot
Hawaii’s Coco Ho triumphed over Australia’s Stephanie Gilmore in the second Quarter-final of the Billabong Women’s Rio Pro, the fifth of seven stops on the 2012 Association of Surfing Professionals (ASP) Women’s World Title Series, which took place at the
main event venue of Barra da Tijuca in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on Saturday, May 12.
The result of the battle served to carry Ho into the Semi-finals, while bringing the competition to a premature end for Gilmore.
“It was definitely crunch time in that man-on-man heat and Steph [Gilmore] is trying to win a World Title and I’m trying to re-qualify and get a really good result,” Ho said. “There definitely weren’t as many jokes and laughs as the last heat. Steph had
priority most of the heat and kept taking the first one and somehow there started being more waves in a set and I kept getting really lucky.”
The quality of the waves gracing the primary event turned out to be nothing that the event organisers had hoped for when they moved back from Arpoador to get done with the third and fourth round of the competition. The tricky one-to-two foot waves offered
very few potential scoring opportunities to the elite ASP surfers, making them work really hard for a couple of decent scores.
The second Quarter-final saw Ho and Gilmore compete against each other for the Semi-final spot.
The 21-year-old Ho had been exhibiting a promising form since arriving at Brazil. However, the same could not be said about Gilmore even though she had managed to make it into the Quarter-finals. The 24-year-old former four-time ASP Women’s Champion and
current No.1 surfer on the 2012 ASP Women’s World Title rankings had been struggling to find consistency in her form over the last few days, something that she needed to take care of quickly or else pay heavily for it.
As the second Quarter-final got underway, Ho went through a series of ordinary scores before locking her first business-wave to collect a 7.00. She kept the momentum going to score an impressive 7.93 off her second business-wave, thus getting to a heat-total
of 14.93 points.
Gilmore failed to offer any significant resistance to her rival’s sail towards victory. Scoring a 2.90 and 4.33 off her best-two waves, the Australian surfer finished with a heat-total of 7.23 points. As a result, Ho walked into the Semi-final after earning
a comprehensive victory.
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