LIHU‘E — The Billabong Azores Islands Pro was forced to cancel due to a lack of contestable waves. Event officials and surfers were greeted at dawn on Sunday by a flat ocean as the expected overnight swell increase failed to
LIHU‘E — The Billabong Azores Islands Pro was forced to cancel due to a lack of contestable waves. Event officials and surfers were greeted at dawn on Sunday by a flat ocean as the expected overnight swell increase failed to manifest itself, states an ASP press release.
Contest director Rodrigo Heredia made another call mid-morning, however this proved fruitless leaving the remaining 96 surfers of round two unable to compete further in the $145,000 event.
Despite all attempts made by Heredia to complete the event, or at least advance through some more rounds, the absolute flat conditions made it impossible to start round two.
Heredia, who has been coming to the Azores all his life, has never seen such conditions for such a long period of time.
“We waited as long as we could to try and get a result and do the right thing by the surfers, but there was no chance of running the event on double banks (Sunday) because it is unsurfable,” he said. “We have studied the option of extending the waiting period and finishing (Monday), however the fore is not looking good either. This is not a usual situation here to have no swell, but this year ‘El Niño’ is causing this flat spell and I hope it doesn’t happen again here or in any other of the contest sites in the world.”
Looking on the positive side of things, Heredia reminded of what has been accomplished at the Billabong Azores Islands Pro presented by Nissan.
“We ran as much of the event as we could and we had a winner, Laura Enever in the Billabong Azores Islands Women’s Pro and we completed the first round of the men’s event. We are looking at changing the dates of the event next year to September when we are guaranteed waves.”
Acting surfer’s rep Jay Thompson summed up the general feeling of the surfers remaining in round two. Knowing that all competitors were fighting for the crucial points on offer for the ASP world rankings, Thompson was optimistic about the future of the event and felt for all the surfers.
“It is unfortunate that we couldn’t finish the event, but that is part of running surf contests, that sometimes Mother Nature doesn’t help us out with the waves,” he said. “It’s one of those situations that you can’t control and it is out of our hands.”
Iain Buchanan, ASP Europe regional head judge, found himself in a situation for only the second time after over 10 years of working on events in Europe. Former competitor on the ASP World Tour, Buchanan completely understood what was going through the minds of event staff and surfers faced with not being able to conclude the contest.
“We needed at least 4 hours of waves to complete at least one more round of competition,” Buchanan said. “What we have now and checking the marine fores it is impossible today to get that amount of time so the decision to not continue was taken.”
Enever tops
women’s event
Australian Laura Enever, 18, claimed her maiden ASP Women’s Star-Series victory with a come-from-behind win over American Courtney Conlogue, 18, in the Women’s Pro, Saturday.
Waves in the 1-2 foot range were on offer with the occasional bigger set coming through. After waiting for the tide to lower, event officials gave the green light to start with clear skies and light off-shore winds making small but ideal conditions for the 35-minute final.
After watching her opponent get off to a flying start, Enever clawed her way back into the final using her priority to nail a 9.17 out of a possible 10 to escape from a combination situation and place herself within striking distance of the title. With five minutes remaining, both girls had an exchange that Enever captured with another excellent 8.17-point ride to turn the tables on Conlogue.
“Courtney got a couple of quick scores up on me and she had me needing a combination of scores for quite a while and I couldn’t actually find one,” Enever said. “But then I got that nine-point ride and I knew that I could do it, which I eventually did backing up it up with another good score, so I was really happy in the end. It was really cool because I had a whole lot of guys supporting me so it felt really good to win the final and do it for them.
“I knew that if I got two turns in I would be able to get a score,” she said. “So that was what I was looking for and I needed only a low score, so I waited for another one to come in because it would have been pretty stupid of me to have lost it from there, so I am really stoked with the way it all worked out.”
Along with the $4,500 for the win, Enever will take 3,000 points to boost her higher on the ASP women’s world rankings.
