SA on Comeback Trail

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Despite bombing out in earlier rounds, the four looked set to re-enter the event after some red-hot surfing. After the fourth day, the points table looked fair to middling for South AFrica, who stood 4th behind Australia, Hawaii and the United States.

It was girl fever on the fourth day in easing 4-6 ft beach breakconditions, with rounds one and two of the under 18 girls on the mainevent podium, along with repercharge one and two of the under 16 boysand repercharge two of the under 18 boys on podium two.

After three days off in pounding surf, the girls shredded the south Piha line-up toshreds, pushing the limit in the race for all-important qualifyinground three berths.

Defending U/18 girls ISA World Junior champion Tyler Wright (LennoxHeads, Aus) kicked off her title defense in style, netting both theopening round's highest individual wave score (8.5) and two-wavecombined total (14.00).

The talented regular foot, which is the youngest surfer to ever winan ASP World Tour event, looked composed in the bumpy conditions toeasily beat the Portugal pairing of Ana Sarmento and Maria Abecasis.

“I'm very happy with this result,” said Wright. “ There were somefun waves coming through and I'm glad about how I surfed. I had to waitfor a good one, but it finally came and I got the score.”

But she wasn't so dominant in her qualifying round two heat,outscored by ISA 2019 World Surfing Games Champion, USA's CournteyConlogue in one of the best heats of the day. Both surfers goinghead-to-head in the tight exchange, unleashing their full repertoire ofmaneuvers to both progress into qualifying round three. Conloguefinished just ahead of Wright – 12.00 to 11.25.

“Things went well for me today,” said Conlogue. “The waves were fun,probably the best since we got here and I gave my best.” She added thatdefeating Wright was a confidence boost, but wasn't her main focus.“Beating Tyler (Wright) is positive, but I compete against myself,” shesaid. “In the heat I just went for the best waves and tried to do mybest.”

Team USA has another successful day with Lakey Peterson and Taylor Pitz joining Conlogue as qualifying round two winners.

lso through to qualifying round three was Australian PhillipaAnderson (Merewether), who bested USA's Kaleigh Gilchrist in adominating performance.

Anderson accrued a 14.00 total to Gilchrist's 7.80. Tahiti's PopkkeKarelle and South Africa's Tanika Hoffman finished in third and fourthrespectively.

But history was made at Piha today. Seven year old Gabriella Aguirre(Ecuador) became the youngest competitor to ever compete at an ISAWorld Junior Surfing Championship event, lining up against HawaiianNage Melamed (Haw) and Tahiti's Maro Mauraii in round one of the U/18girls

Points Table

Day 4

01 - Aus - 7770
01 - Haw - 7770
01 - USA - 7770
01 - Zaf - 7770
01 - Tah - 7770
06 - Fra - 7290
06 - NZL - 7290
06 - Per - 7290
09 - Por - 6735
10 - UK - 6305
11 - Arg - 5515
11 - Jap - 5515
13 - Bra - 4450
14 - Mex - 4220
15 - Spn - 3900
16 - Ecu - 3165
17 - Ind - 1620
18 - Ita - 1000
19 - Can - 675
20 - Fij - 210
20 - Van - 165