Paige Hareb and Rebecca Woods survive Round 2 of the TSB Bank NZ Surf Festival – Surfing News
New Zealand’s Paige Hareb and Australia’s Rebecca Woods grabbed top honours in their respective Round 2 heats of the TSB Bank NZ Surf Festival featuring the Dow AgroSciences Pro, third of seven stops on the 2012 Association of Surfing Professionals (ASP)
Women’s World Tour, which resumed at the Fitzroy Beach in Taranaki, New Zealand, on Thursday, April 12.
Hareb managed to edge past France’s Pauline Ado in the first heat of Round 2 to successfully make it into the third round while bringing the competition to a premature end for her rival in the process.
The second heat saw Woods force Hawaii’s Coco Ho into making an early exit from the event after getting the better of the latter to advance through into Round 3.
With four-to-five foot waves and clean off-shore waves prevailing at the primary event site on the second day of the latest ASP Women’s elite tour event, the day was expected to deliver a heavy dose of enthralling surfing action.
Paige, the 21-year-old Taranaki local, had failed to make much of an impact during her Round 1 heat and consequently got relegated to Round 2 to surf again for the Round 3 spot. Pitted against Ado during her battle for survival, the Kiwi surfer clearly had
her hands full, though the scales were unarguably tipping in her favour due to her local knowledge of the waves.
As the battle kicked-off, Hareb got down to business right away, locking her first business-wave in the opening minutes of the heat to post a 6.50 on the score-board. After a long and determined hunt, she managed to add an additional 6.00 points to her account,
finishing with a resultant heat-total of 12.50 points.
Ado got off to a slow start, but gradually built momentum to eventually post a 5.35 on the score-board off her first business-wave halfway through the heat. She needed to find a big score in order to challenge her rival’s lead and got hold of a relatively
juicy wave in the dying minutes of the battle. Despite giving it her all, she was only able to earn a 6.75 off it, consequently reaching a heat-total of 12.10 points, conceding victory and thus the Round 3 spot to her rival due to a deficit of merely 0.40
points.
“I wasn’t finishing my waves yesterday,” Hareb said after the heat. “So today I made sure I got a couple of good turns on the same wave. Then I started frothing a little bit and took off on a couple of bad waves, but I’m stoked to get through the heat. It’s
cool to have everyone down here. It’s the only chance they get to see an ASP Women’s World Championship Tour event in person instead of seeing it live on the computer. It’s great to have all the top girls here and inspire all the little kids.”
The second heat turned out to be a low-scoring affair with both Woods and Ho struggling to find big scores throughout the course of the 30-minute battle.
Once the dust settled, it was Woods who stood victorious with her heat-total of 10.50 points against Ho’s two-wave total of 7.15 points, consequently removing the latter from the contention for the event-title while making her way through into the third
round.
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