Soli Bailey and Dean Bowen walk into Round 4 of Billabong ASP World Junior Championships comfortably
Australia’s Soli Bailey and his fellow countryman Dean Bowen successfully made it into the fourth round of Billabong Association of Surfing Professionals (ASP) World Junior Championships after winning their respective Round 3 heats that went down at Burleigh
Heads in Gold Coast, Australia, on Thursday, January 26.
Tasting defeat at the hands of Bailey in the 15th heat, Hawaii’s Keanu Asing found himself out of the contention for the event title. Japan’s Hiroto Arai was left to deal with the same disappointment after conceding a comfortable victory to Bowen
in the 16th heat.
The latest day of the competition saw four-foot waves and slight on-shore winds prevailing at the primary event site. Even though the waves were promising, they were quite tricky at the same time, prompting the surfers to remain selective and carefully chose
which section to attack. The occasional appearance of a high-performance wave also kept the surfers on their toes.
There could not have been a battle set-up for a battle between Bailey and Asing, two in-form surfers who had walked away with top honours in their Round 1 heats with ease. It was only natural to expect the bout between the two to be full of intensity as
neither seemed likely to go down without putting up a strong fight.
As the 15th heat kicked off, both the surfers got busy immediately. Asing attacked a nice-looking wave to post a 6.00 on the score-board, but it began to seem like a rather average effort after Bailey responded with a 7.83-point wave.
The Australian surfer went on to add another 5.83 points to his account, moving to a heat-total of 13.66 points. Asing had the window of opportunity wide open in front of him, but he failed to grasp the chance after scoring a mere 6.57 off his second business-wave.
As a result, he finished in a 1.09-point deficit that forced him to surrender defeat to Bailey.
The final heat of Round 3 as well as the day pitted Bowen against Arai. After getting off to a shaky start, both the surfers had managed to make a strong come-back in the second round to successfully extend their life in the competition. However, the face-off
between the two surfers was going to mark the end of the road for one of them.
As the contest got underway, Bowen wasted no time in making his intentions known. Locking a rather juicy wave, the Australian pulled off a combination of stylish manoeuvres to post a 9.10 on the score-board. He backed it up with an impressive 8.33 to move
to a heat-total of 17.43 points.
Arai, on the other hand, never really got to settle down and apparently had trouble adjusting to the conditions at hand. In the end, he had to do with a rather disappointing 3.33 and 4.03-point wave, thus finishing with a heat-total of 7.36 points. The lacklustre
performance put on by Arai led to a comprehensive victory for Bowen.
The Billabong ASP World Junior Championships Gold Coast in the third and final event of ASP World Junior Tour and will determine the men’s and women’s 2011 ASP World Junior Champion.
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