World Surfing Games titles and team quotas to be decided on final day of competition
While there are no more individual quotas left at the World Surfing Games, the fight goes on for the team quotas and world titles.
Brazil currently leads the women’s team ranking with reigning champion Tatiana Weston-Webb and the country’s national champion Taina Hinckel fighting for spots in the final of the repechage.
The two Brazilian surfers will face tough competition to get out of their next repechage heat, however. There they will face Olympic champions Carissa Moore who was unstoppable until the final seconds on Saturday, taking a 0.30 win over Weston-Webb.
Spain is second in the team ranking, but only Erostarbe remains in the competition. She will face Australia’s Sally Fitzgibbons in the next round.
A three-time World Surfing Games champion, Fitzgibbons is eager to reclaim her title as she clearly showed with her last-minute jump to second place in the women’s round 5, which led to Weston-Webb and Hinckel being sent to the repechage.
Over in the men’s team competition, France has broken into the lead after Brazil’s Filipe Toledo got eliminated in the day’s first repechage heat.
Fortunately, Toledo’s teammate Yago Dora was quick to lift the team spirits. As fatigue caught up to the other surfers pushing through three back-to-back repechage heats, Dora defied nature and continued to look stronger and stronger. The Brazilian surfer scored 14.73 to open his day’s campaign, bumped that up to 17.24 in the next heat and finished off with 18.46 in the third.
His last two scores are currently the highest-scoring heat totals of the competition.
Brazil’s three-time world champion Gabriel Medina follows right behind with the third and fourth highest totals. He got his highest score to date, 17.06 points, on Saturday, is undefeated so far in Puerto Rico and continues to improve heading into the final rounds.
Medina will face two Frenchmen in the next round, Vaast and Duru, while Dora will hope to fight his way from the repechages against Waida, Criere and Boukhaim to keep Brazil’s hopes of a third men’s quota alive.
Follow the action from the final Olympic surfing qualifier live from anywhere in the world on Olympics.com and the official Olympics app.