Malia Manuel and Lakey Peterson qualify for Nike US Open of Surfing semi-finals
Hawaii’s Malia Manuel and America’s Lakey Peterson emerged victorious in their respective quarter-final heats at the Nike US Open of Surfing, the last of seven stops in the 2012 Association of Surfing Professionals (ASP) Women’s World Championship Tour,
which went down at Huntington Beach in California, America, on Friday, August 3.
Manuel got the better of America’s Courtney Conlogue in the first Quarter-final to advance to the semi-finals, bringing an excellent run by the American surfer to an end.
The second Quarter-final saw Peterson dominate her compatriot Sage Erickson with a superb performance, thus moving into the next stage of the competition while bringing the event to a premature end for her rival.
The first Quarter-final went down to the wire as both Manuel and Conlogue tried to make the most of the bumpy conditions on offer. The latter in particular had been in a prime form over the last few months and thus was never expected to go down without a
fight.
As the battle got underway, the 18-year-old Manuel posted a 6.50 on the score-board off her first business-wave and added an additional 6.70 points to her account to reach a heat-total of 13.20 points.
Conlogue, on the other hand, scored a 6.50 off her opening wave and soon backed it up with a 6.43-point ride. Failing to improve on her score, she eventually had to settle for a heat-total of 12.93 points, thus surrendering the semi-final spot to her rival.
The next heat featured an outstanding performance by Peterson, the current frontrunner for the Rookie of the Year award. Giving her rival Erickson hardly any room to breathe, Peterson collected a 9.83 off a wave early in the heat and later backed it up with
a near-perfect 9.93-point ride to reach a heat-total of 19.76 points.
Erickson scored a 7.33 and 6.43 off her top-two waves to finish with a heat-total of 13.76 points, thus succumbing to her rival’s onslaught by a huge margin.
“That just gave me a lot of confidence,” Peterson said. “The waves were consistent which was nice because if you fell you knew you were going to get another one. I was just really relaxed and my board felt really good in those conditions. Sage (Erickson)
is one of my good friends so surfing against her is bittersweet. She’s a good competitor and pushes me to be my best and at the same time we were having fun out there.”
The enthralling action continued at the Huntington Beach with the remaining quarter-finals of Nike US Open of Surfing.
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