Mick Fanning and Julian Wilson pass through Round 3 of Oakley Pro Bali – Surfing news
Australia’s Mick Fanning and his fellow countryperson Julian Wilson successfully made it through the third round of the Oakley Pro Bali, fifth of ten stops on the 2013 Association of Surfing Professionals (ASP) World Championship Tour, which continued at
Keramas in Bali, Indonesia, on Tuesday, June 25, 2013.
Fanning managed to get the better of his compatriot Yadin Nicol in the seventh heat of Round 3 to secure his place in Round 4, while bringing the competition to an early end for his rival in the process.
The eighth heat saw Wilson prevail over France’s Jeremy Flores with quite a convincing margin, thus advancing into the next round of the competition, while pushing his rival out of the competition.
After testing the patience of the both contenders and fans alike for four days, Keramas finally offered amazing surfing conditions on the latest day of the competition, thus allowing the event organisers to finally get the Round 3 proceedings underway.
While the morning session had featured some splendid performances, the afternoon session turned out to be no different, with the world’s top surfing talent holding nothing back as they continued to battle it out for survival in barrelling six-to-eight foot
waves.
Fanning, former two-time ASP World Champion, found himself pitted against Nicol, a surfer who lacked experience on the elite tour, but had plenty of skills to make up for it.
As the man-on-man battle got underway, both the surfers got off to a slow start. The potential opportunities were there, but it seemed as if both Fanning and Nicol were waiting for certain type of waves to arrive before unleashing their barrel-riding prowess.
The Australian surfer eventually locked his first business-wave to post a 6.30 on the score-board and soon added another 6.23 points to his account, thus moving to a heat-total of 12.53 points.
Taking the conditions into account, Nicol had quite a decent chance to go past his rival on the scoreboard. However, he failed to find his rhythm and only managed to register a heat-total of 9.73 points, which included a 5.33 and 4.40-point ride. As a result,
he was forced to concede victory to his rival.
The next heat saw Wilson and Flores lock horns for survival. The young Australian surfer navigated through the barrels quite expertly and made a couple of really good wave selections. Earning an identical score of 7.37 off both his business-waves, he finished
with a heat-total of 14.74 points.
Flores struggled to adapt to the conditions on hand and as a result, put on quite a dismal performance. Scoring a 6.87 off his first business-wave and adding a mere 3.07 to his account off his second business-wave, the Frenchman finished with a heat-total
of 9.94 points. The effort was hardly good enough to challenge Wilson’s score and therefore resulted in his defeat and consequently elimination from the competition.
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