Australian surfer, Owen Wright, took first place in the SriLankan Airlines Pro in the Maldives yesterday!
According to many of the judges and contest officials this was one of the most exciting and high scoring finals they’d seen in years.
Owen Wright went head-to-head with Pat Gudauskas as the two battled it out for first place. Wright emerged the victor as the final scores gave Wright 19.23 and Gudauskas 18.93 out of a possible 20.
In Australia, Margaret River is one of the few surf breaks on the ASP World Qualifying Series capable of really challenging professional surfers by delivering powerful, large surf.
Today a solid six-to-eight-foot swell was pounding the outer reef at Surfers’ Point for the competitors to show their stuff.
The message became clearer even before the opening heat began when veteran Brazilian surfer Paulo Moura signaled to the judging tower by waiving his broken board to hold off on starting the heat and get a new board out to him after his was snapped when paddling to the line-up.
The frantic start failed to rattle Moura, who went on to impressively win the heat, defeating up and coming Hawaiian Mason Ho comfortably on a score line of each surfers top two scoring rides of 13.50 to Ho’s 11.23.
“That was a tough start to the heat and luckily I was able to get the attention of the tower and get a new board out quickly,” Moura said. “Waves like this test us all and you feel good about your surfing when you win in these conditions.”
Australia’s fastest emerging young surfer, Owen Wright, who grew up on NSW’s south coast but has recently relocated to Lennox Head, is rapidly establishing himself on the open ASP circuit and this morning toyed with the conditions to notch up another impressive heat win.
With excellent large surf fore all week, Wright is optimistic about his chances here.
“It’s big open ocean surf and I definitely like the wave as you have plenty of scope to really put together large power driven moves,” Wright said. “If it gets bigger as they are predicting I’m fine with that, I’d prefer it bigger than smaller.”