Shaun Joubert and Cory Arrambide claim quarter-final spot at San Miguel Pro Zarautz
South Africa’s Shaun Joubert and America’s Cory Arrambide claimed top honours in their respective Round 5 (Round of 16) heats at the Association of Surfing Professionals (ASP) 6-Star San Miguel Pro Zarautz that continued at the main event site of Zarautz
in Basque Country, Spain, on Friday, August 31.
The third heat saw Joubert get the better of Brazil’s Hizunome Bettero to secure his place in the next stage of the competition, bringing the event to a premature event for his rival in the process.
Australia’s Jack Freestone was unable to deprive Arrambide of taking the win in the fourth heat, getting eliminated from the competition as a result.
The late afternoon session on the latest day of the event saw the conditions becoming pretty demanding, offering surfers three-to-four foot waves that were accompanied by strong onshore winds, thus making it quite challenging for them to gain control. However,
the surfing talent in contention for the coveted prize had rose up to the challenge during the last few days and were not expected to go down easily in their latest heats either.
Pitted against Bettero in the third heat, Joubert had his work cut out for him. The South African surfer responded to the challenge head-on, scoring a 7.17 off his first business-wave and soon added another 4.70 points to his account, thus moving to a two-wave
total of 11.87 points. The score held up until the end to seal the fate of the man-on-man battle in his favour.
Bettero collected a couple of scores in the five-point range, thus finishing with a heat-total of 11.50 points. A deficit of 0.37 points was all it took for him to find himself out of the competition.
The fourth heat saw Arrambide put on a superb performance to down Freestone. The latter was nothing short of impressive either, scoring an 8.27 and 6.57 off his best-two waves in the dying minutes of the heat, but his efforts proved insufficient to challenge
the 23-year-old American’s heat-total of 16.00 points, which included an impressive 8.83 and 7.17-point ride.
“It was a good heat,” Arrambide started. “Jack is such a good surfer I knew it was going to be a tough one. I actually let him get a wave under my priority and he did a huge air 360, there’s nothing you can do, he can get a closeout and get an 8. I kind
of made a mistake, but there were plenty of other waves, I got a little left, made a couple good turns and got the 7 I needed so I’m stoked!”
The event organisers called it a day after the conclusion of the fourth heat, delaying the remaining heats to the next day.
Tags: