Pauline Ado prevails over Rebecca Woods to enter Billabong Women’s Rio Pro Quarter-finals
France’s Pauline Ado got the better of Australia’s Rebecca Woods in the third heat of Billabong Women’s Rio Pro’s Round 4 that went down at the primary event site of Barra da Tijuca in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on Saturday, May 12.
The successful result served to carry Ado through into the Quarter-finals, while eliminating Woods from the fifth of seven stops on the 2012 Association of Surfing Professionals (ASP) Women’s World Title Series.
While the first and second round of the competition went down in promising waves at the alternative event venue of Arpoador, the event organisers shifted back to the main event site of Barra da Tijuca for the third and fourth round of the competition. The move did not work out in the favour of the competition as the point-break offered tricky one-to-two foot waves with very little potential scoring opportunities for the surfers. It pretty much came down to the experience of the elite female surfers as to how well they could adapt to the demanding conditions and collect a couple of decent scores to have a chance of making it through into the next stage of the competition.
The third heat of Round 4 saw Ado taking on Woods in a battle for the Quarter-final spot. Both the surfers had surfed quite nicely in the two-to-three waves that were on offer at Arpoador, but struggled to find their rhythm at Barra da Tijuca. Standing on the edge, they needed to collect a successful result in order to stay alive in contention for the event title.
As the battle for survival got underway, Ado got off to a nice start, locking her first business-wave in the early stages of the heat to post a 6.67 on the score-board for an early lead. After a long and determined hunt, she managed to get hold of another decent wave, which she utilised to add an additional 5.43 points to her account, hence moving to a heat-total of 12.10 points.
Woods did not have a huge target to beat, but the conditions of the waves got the better of her. Scoring a 4.73 off her first business-wave and backing it up with a late 5.60-point ride, the Australian surfer finished with a heat-total of 10.33 points, thus forced to concede victory to her rival and send her through into the Quarter-finals.
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