Garrett Parkes and Filipe Toledo enter Billabong ASP World Junior Championships Quarter-finals
Australia’s Garrett Parkes and Brazil’s Filipe Toledo continued to exhibit a deadly form on day 7 of Billabong Association of Surfing Professionals (ASP) World Junior Championships and moved into the Quarter-finals after collecting a comprehensive win in
their respective Round 4 heats that went down at the iconic Burleigh Heads in Gold Coast, Australia, on Friday, January 27.
Both Japanese Kaito Ohashi and South African Beyrick De Vries found themselves out of the contention for the even title after putting on rather lacklustre performance in Round 4 and consequently succumbing to Parkes and Toledo respectively.
The surfing battles were expected to become more intense as the competition came down to the fight for a place in the Quarter-finals. The surfers had done well to make it into the fourth round and it was only natural to find them pumped-up to meet their
latest challenge head-on despite the stormy conditions.
Parkes, current No.3 of the ASP World Junior Rankings, adjusted to the conditions at hand superbly during the fifth heat to put on an impressive performance. He got busy right from the word go, going through a series of average wave-scores before posting
a 6.83 on the score-board. He kept the momentum going by immediately locking his second business-wave and unloaded a series of exquisite manoeuvres on it to add an additional 7.60 points to his account.
While the Australian hardly showed any signs of discomfort in the stormy seas, his rival Ohashi failed to read the conditions properly and thus barely managed to put on a 4.00 and 2.60 on the score-board off his best-two waves. Finishing with a heat-total
of 6.60 points, the Japanese surfer conceded victory to Parkes, sending the latter into the Quarter-finals.
The sixth heat turned out to be a pretty one-sided affair, courtesy of an outstanding performance put on by Toledo. The Brazilian rocketed off to a great start, posting a 7.67 on the score-board off his first wave in the opening minutes of the heat. In the
final minutes of the heat, he went on to add a 9.63 to his account, moving to a heat-total of 17.30 points.
De Vries, on the other hand, evidently struggled to get hold of a competitive score. Despite facing a challenging task of score two big scores, the South African scored a 4.77 and 5.67 off his best-two waves to finish with a heat-total of 10.44 points. The
disappointing response by De Vries enabled Toledo to walk away with a comprehensive victory.
The Billabong ASP World Junior Championships Gold Coast in the third and final event of ASP World Junior Tour and will determine the men’s and women’s 2011 ASP World Junior Champion.
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