John John Florence downs Willian Cardoso to step into Round 3 of Billabong Rio Pro – Surfing News
Hawaii’s John John Florence successfully made his way through into the third round of Billabong Rio Pro, the third of ten stops on the 2012 Association of Surfing Professionals (ASP) World Tour, after getting a comprehensive victory over Brazil’s Willian
Cardoso in the third heat of Round 2 that went down at the main event site of Barra da Tijuca in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on Monday, May 14.
While the eventual outcome of the battle served to carry Florence in the next round, it also brought the competition to a premature end for Cardoso.
“It was a really hard heat and I was so tired,” Florence said during his post-heat interview. “We’ve been sitting around these last couple of days. There really haven’t been any waves and then we were straight into these conditions. I try to take the heats
as a free surf. It seems like I surf the best when I’m having fun, but obviously you’ve got the jersey on and you know you need to finish your waves off.”
The challenging four-to-six foot barrels on offer at the primary event site on the latest day of the competition took the surfers by surprise as they had been spending their last few days on dry land due to the scarcity of the waves. The first round of the
event had gone down at Arpoador where the tides had been pretty low and inconsistent. The quality of waves on Monday put the adaptability of the world’s best surfers to test.
Florence, an ASP World Tour rookie, had struggled to find his rhythm during the opening round of Billabong Rio Pro at Arpoador, consequently finding himself getting relegated to the elimination round. Pitted against him in Round 2 was Cardoso, the replacement
surfer after the 11-time ASP World Champion Kelly Slater withdrew from the competition due to an injury.
As the third heat of Round 2 got underway, Florence went through a series of ordinary scores before locking his first business-wave halfway through the heat to unleash a series of aerial tricks to post a 7.83 on the score-board. He continued to navigate
his way through the barrels before pulling off another combination of tricks to add an additional 8.37 points to his account, thus moving to a heat-total of 16.20 points.
Cardoso was unable to adjust to the conditions and offered a pretty weak response, getting a 1.83 and 5.33 off his best-two waves to finish with a heat-total of 7.16 points. As a result, he was forced to surrender victory and thus the Round 3 spot to Florence.
Tags: