Yadin Nicol and Raoni Monteiro advance to the semi-finals at Saquarema Surf Pro International
The quarter-finals of the Saquarema Surf Pro International kicked off at the beach-break of Itauna in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on Monday, May 30th.
Australia’s Yadin Nicol defeated Brazil’s Gabriel Medina in the first quarter-final, while Brazil’s Raoni Monteiro prevailed over Australia’s Lincoln Taylor in the second quarter-final.
The conditions at the event site were nothing short of a nightmare for the surfers. Stormy 8 to 10 foot waves were breaking at the beach, with strong offshore winds and overcast weather conditions. There was hardly any surfer who could feel confident under
the given circumstances. Unfortunately, there was nothing that could be done about the conditions prevailing at Itauna and the surfers just had to adjust to them.
In the first quarter-final, Australia’s Nicol battled it out with the local surfer, Medina, for a place in the semi-final. At this crucial stage of the competition, the challenging surfing conditions could hardly be used as an excuse for not coming up with
the best performance.
Medina locked his first wave to get 6.27 points off it and take the lead. However, Nicol responded by catching a wave to throw off some sensational tricks and earn 7.83 points to get in the front. He later followed it up with an equally impressive second
wave, getting a score of 7.80 this time to end the heat with a final score of 15.63.
The Brazilian surfer, Medina required 9.30 off his second wave to pass his rival’s score. As expected, he was unable to come up with such a huge second-wave score, managing a 5.77 instead to end up with a heat total of 12.10 and getting eliminated from the
competition after surrendering the victory to Nicol.
The second quarter-final pitted another local surfer, Monteiro, against Taylor. The Australian surfer drew first blood by scoring 6.33 points off his very first wave. The Brazilian responded in the later stages of the heat with a wave that earned him a similar
score to that of his rival’s.
It came down to the last wave for both the surfers to seal the fate of the contest. Monteiro surfed his last wave hard, getting an impressive 7.77 from it. Taylor needed a 7.78 to clinch the win, but only managed to get a 5.83 off the last wave to end the
heat with a total of 12.10 points.
Monteiro’s place is confirmed in the quarter-final after the second-quarter-final, while Taylor has been eliminated from the Saquarema Surf Pro International, the Association of Surfing Professionals (ASP) Prime event presented by Coca Cola and Oakley.
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