Jessi Miley-Dyer and Nage Melamed survive round three of Estoril Surf & Music Billabong Girls Pro
The second round of Estoril Surf & Music Billabong Girls Pro wrapped up with the 12th heat on Friday, June 10th, at the Praia do Guincho beach in Estoril, Portugal.
The four-way battle featured Australia’s Jessi Miley-Dyer in a showdown against her compatriot, Freya Prumm, as well as Hawaii’s Nage Melamed and America’s Shelby Detmers for a spot in the third round.
Dyer managed to emerge triumphant from the heat, while Melamed settled for a runner-up place, quite satisfied with the result as it confirmed her place in the next round as well. Prumm and Detmers rounded out the third and fourth position, hence facing ejection
from the event title race.
The heat turned out to be a low scoring one with only one surfer managing to exceed the 10-point mark. This was mainly due to the tough surfing conditions that prevailed at the primary event site, with merely two-to-three foot waves breaking at the beach.
To make surfing even more challenging, strong offshore winds were accompanying these small waves, putting the surfers in a greater handicap. With hardly enough juice in the waves, any hope of getting to see the ladies showcase their technical tricks was
lost.
Despite the demanding conditions, Dyer managed to come up with a relatively decent performance. She locked a wave half-way through the heat to throw down a couple of conventional, but stylish nevertheless, manoeuvres to earn 6.25 points off it.
Adding an additional 4.25 points to her account a little later, Dyer moved to a two-wave total of 10.50 points. While the score of nothing that would have made her breathe easy, it turned out to be the highest in the heat and carried her off to victory.
The Hawaiian surfer, Melamed, tried to put up a fight to attain the top honours, but the effort turned out to be futile. While she seemed to be struggling in the initial stages, her luck changed in the final moments of the heat. She caught a wave for 6.25
points and now only required a second wave score of 4.26 to move ahead of her Australian rival, Dyer.
Much to her dismay, the maximum Melamed managed to earn after her 6.25 score was a 2.90. While it was not good enough to take her all the way, it proved to be sufficient to extend her life in the competition by qualifying her for the next round.
Prumm and Detmers looked completely out of rhythm during the heat, feverishly searching and yet failing to earn good scores of the waves they surfed. Without any change in luck, they ended up finishing in third and fourth place with a heat-total of 7.80
and 4.50 respectively. Consequently, both of them were eliminated from the competition.
With the final heat of the round of 48 concluding, the first day of Estoril Surf & Music Billabong Girls Pro wrapped up. The surfing action was to continue on the Saturday with the ladies competing in the round of 24.
Tags: