Pauline Ado downs Paige Hareb to enter Round 3 of Billabong Women’s Rio Pro
France’s Pauline Ado got the better of New Zealand’s Paige Hareb in the first heat of Billabong Women’s Rio Pro’s Round 2 that went down at the alternate event venue of Arpoador in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on Thursday, May 10.
The successful result for Ado served to take her through into the third round while bringing the competition to a premature end for her rival in the process.
While the first day of the fifth of seven stops on the 2012 Association of Surfing Professionals (ASP) Women’s World Tour went down in excellent conditions, the second day saw tough conditions prevailing at Arpoador. The low frequency of the demanding one-to-three foot waves did not offer much potential scoring opportunities to the surfers, consequently causing them to rely heavily on luck and experience in order to post whatever decent score they could on the score-board.
After failing to make much of an impact in the opening round of the competition, Ado and Hareb found themselves standing on the edge, just one stumble away from elimination. Both the surfers needed to step up in order to stay alive in contention for the event title. The form that they had exhibited on day 1 would not have done much for their confidence.
Pitted against each other in the opening round of Round 2, both Ado and Hareb braced themselves for what they expected to be a testing battle.
As the heat got underway, Hareb went for an aggressive strategy, locking wave after wave while searching for a decent score to take an advantage. Locking her first business-wave, she posted a 3.67 on the score-board. After another lengthy hunt, the New Zealand-based surfer added an additional 4.50 points to her account, thus moving to a heat-total of 8.17 points.
Ado did not get off to the best of starts, struggling to adapt to the conditions. She scored a 3.67 off her first business-wave, which could hardly be considered a confident start. However, she managed to leap into the lead through a 6.33-point ride to take her heat-total to 10.00 points. The 1.83-point lead served to seal the fate of the first heat of the elimination round in her favour to carry her through into the next round.
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