PASTA POINT, Maldives — Life simply doesn’t get any better for the ASP World Qualifying Series with the Maldives producing a memorable day of great waves at Pasta Point, this past Monday. The surfers responded to the waves by throwing
PASTA POINT, Maldives — Life simply doesn’t get any better for the ASP World Qualifying Series with the Maldives producing a memorable day of great waves at Pasta Point, this past Monday.
The surfers responded to the waves by throwing caution to the wind with big moves aplenty to entertain the spectators relaxing on deck chairs, sipping cocktails and simply enjoying the sport of surfing in this incredible environment.
Hawaiian Dustin Barca was the day’s standout. The confident Kaua‘i surfer showed no signs of nerves as he lined up in the day’s heavyweight clash against Dane Reynolds and Hank Gaskell.
While Reynolds has been this year’s outstanding performer on the ASP Qualifying circuit with his new wave aerial attack, it was Barca who took to the skies with a series of outstanding aerial moves combined with his committed powerful backhand attack to take the heat with the highest event wave score (9.0 out of 10) and highest wave tally of 17.86.
Fellow Hawaiian Hank Gaskell was also busy pulling big aerials in this heat and finished second to progress with Rey-nolds to the big shock elimination.
Reynolds was far from disgraced Monday, he also pulled some great aerial moves and scored well but didn’t quite find the quality waves like Barca and Gaskell.
A focused Barca had little to say after the heat.
“I don’t think about my competitors at all, I simply go out to surf my best,” he said in a release. “No game plan before the heat, just surf the best waves the best I can.”
Australia’s Matt Wilkinson was another young emerging surfer eliminated today going down to Frederick Robin and Antonio Borteletto. Wilkinson was advancing for most of the heat and also scored well with some strong aerial moves that couldn’t match the consistency of his competitors.
Adam Robertson signaled the strong Australian presence at this event with a convincing heat win as the waves peaked around mid day. Robertson defeated highly decorated veteran Fabio Gouveia to advance to round three.
“This is an amazing event, we score great waves every year here and it’s a lot of fun to surf — you need to pinch yourself that it’s not a holiday and stay focused on the task of winning heats — there’s a long way to go to get an acceptable result here for me.”
Conditions look likely to remain excellent for the entire event.
