Julian Wilson takes down Jeremy Flores to secure spot in Billabong Rio Pro Quarter-finals
Australia’s Julian Wilson got the better of France’s Jeremy Flores in the third heat of Billabong Rio Pro’s Round 5 that went down at the primary event site of Barra da Tijuca in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on Tuesday afternoon, May 15.
With a successful result in the fifth round, Wilson made his way through into the Quarter-finals, bringing the competition to a premature end for Flores in the process.
The beach-break of Barra da Tijuca had not exactly been kind to the surfers during the third of ten stops on the 2012 Association of Surfing Professionals (ASP) World Title Series. The barrelling conditions at the primary event site had kept the surfers
on the back-foot during majority of their heats, making them work really hard while conducting their hunt for a couple of good scores. The surfing elite were more than capable of handling the conditions at hand, but things were bound to become a bit complicated
while trying to best both the barrelling conditions as well as the intimidating competition.
Wilson, the 2011 ASP World Rookie of the Year, found himself taking the longer and tougher road into the Quarter-finals after his Round 4 stumble. He now faced the ASP World Tour veteran Flores in a man-on-man bout for survival.
As the third heat of Round 5 got underway, Wilson got off to an ordinary start, warming up to the conditions while collecting a series of ordinary scores. Almost midway through the heat, the young Australian sensation caught his first business-wave to put
his exquisite skills on display, posting a 6.50 on the score-board in the process. He kept the momentum going and immediately caught his second business-wave to add an additional 4.93 points to his account, thus finishing with a heat-total of 11.43 points.
Flores hardly looked comfortable while dealing with the barrelling conditions, something that hardly came as a surprise as a lot of his colleagues had struggled to adjust to the conditions throughout the day. The Frenchman collected a couple of scores in
the five-point range to eventually finish with a heat-total of 10.77 points, thus finishing 0.66 points behind his rival. As a result, he found himself eliminated from the competition while Wilson advanced into the Quarter-finals.
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