“When the last wave of the heat came, in the last minute, I went again and got a 9.2, and I was so excited. For sure, I thank God for this moment. I have taken another step towards coming to the final of this contest,” concluded Moura. That last line might be considered by some to be teetering on arrogance, but this young Brazilian is anything but that. He is humble, respectful and worthy.
North-east Brazil’s unique and sincere surfing personality Marcelo Nunes also charged through his heat earlier today taking out Daniel Wills (AUS). The final 10 of the day came from Australia’s Tom Whitaker who took on another of Brazil’s finest in Percy ‘Neco’ Padaratz. Whitaker opened with a 10!
“He was in that barrel for so long it was ridiculous, just weaving his way through it, dropping and rising and just flowing with it. Kind of masterful actually,” observed surfing icon Herbie Fletcher, summarising Whitaker’s inherent skills after watching his 10 from the channel. Whitaker however had trouble following through.
“I had made up my mind before the heat that I was going to sit out there and wait for the good sets, hoping to snag the medium-sized ones that seemed to be peeling down the reef best, and that’s where I sat after the ten, but nothing came. Nothing! I needed a three to improve my backup!” said Whitaker.
“Neco was sitting a little inside picking off the western bowls, just pulling into those short runs and getting the points. I was getting really frustrated, but I stuck to my guns, and eventually, with only minutes left, what I was waiting for arrived, and I got an 8+ to seal the deal. It was nerve-racking though,” said Whitaker.
Besides the ten pointers, there were of course heaps of brilliant highlights. Our world champ was one of them. He stepped forward today. He himself admits that he falters through the first three rounds of every event. The light end of the draw is his nemesis, the local wildcards these days always a handful, sometimes even for a world champion.
Respected local Hira Teriinatoofa took a long but somewhat messy barrel as first blow in his showdown with Irons. He got a very respectable score, but Irons’ opener was like that line out of the movie Crocodile Dundee when Paul Hogan says “That’s not a knife…this is a knife!” as he pulls out a 12”+ David Bowie style unit to overshadow his attempted assailants tiny flick knife.
“This is a barrel!” is what Irons would have been entitled to declare after his first ride. It was big and bad, but he flushed out of it clean. He surfed his heat, as a world champion might be expected to, and remains an obvious serious threat in this classic event.
Considering conditions, and disregarding the fact that mere mortals would have mostly been unworthy or incapable out there in today’s conditions, we were lucky to escape with only cuts and bruises. There was some skin lost.
Lopez took off way too late and hit the reef, head slammed and got a couple of bruises, but after his butt-butting a jet ski yesterday, Damien Hobgood was the story of perseverance today. Admitting to enduring pain after his mishap yesterday, he survived an even more ridiculously steep drop than Lopez’s today, and incurred a head hammering from the lip as he tried to pull in, disappeared, then re-appeared surging over/through the foam ball, then ate it and hit the reef to skin his right hand and knee.
The Hobgoods are a special breed, with defending Billabong Pro Tahiti champion CJ marching onwards into round four as well after his victory over Lee Winkler in heat four today. JoelParkinson (AUS), Fred Patacchia (AUS), Nathan Hedge (AUS)…oh honestly there’s too many highlights to mention.
From what we saw today, this is anyone’s event. A book could be written about what went down today, making other sports of far broader renown seem insignificant ploys.
The draw for tomorrow’s round four, the first step to our crowning of this year’s Billabong Pro Tahiti champion here at treacherous/terrifying/terrific Teahupoo is incredible. The top half of the draw, in particular, bears more gold than Fort Knox. Let’s pray that Mother Ocean talks Sister Sky into being as clean as she was today?
Tomorrow’s swell and predictions have Teahupoo fielding strong SW groundswell peaking around 6-8', generally light E'ly winds and poss thunderstorms, with the chance of a few rogue sets slightly bigger than today’s late afternoon charge by the swell.
Billabong’s Event Production manager Bushy Mitchell daily pursues the quaint habit of personally seeking out every worker on the event team and shaking their hand to say ‘thank you’ to all for their individual efforts each respective day. His crew and the surfers today, would have been more deserving of hugs.
