Current ratings leader and previous
two-time Rip Curl Pro winner Sunny Garcia, from Hawaii,
today added another coveted Bell trophy to his collection
after defeating Brazil's Flavio Padaratz in a dramatic
35-minute final, two hours drive southwest along Victoria's
Great Ocean Road, from the main contest setup at Bells
Beach.
Garcia is currently experiencing
the biggest competitive roll of his surfing career,
having recently taken out the first World Championship
Tour (WCT) event of the year at the Billabong Pro,
Queensland, Australia; the ASP specialty Da Hui 'Shoot-Out'
tournament in Hawaii the week prior to collect US$50,000,
as well as his fourth Triple Crown of Surfing title
in Hawaii last December.
This win, in clean 1.5-2 metre
hollow right-handers along the Great Ocean Road's
pristine coastline, rockets him 540 points ahead of
his closest rival, Australia's Taj Burrow, en-route
to his first ASP world title in 14 years touring.
All three of Garcia's Rip Curl Pro titles have been
won at mobile locations. His first in 1995 was at
Winki Pop, the following year he backed-up the win
at Johanna, then today added the Great Ocean Road
to his list of alternative winning venues. "I don't
know, I've been pretty lucky," Garcia offered trying
to explain the phenomenon. "Yesterday, when they were
saying they wanted to move it, as much as I wanted
to surf, part of me was thinking, 'maybe I'll have
a good chance of winning.' I'm glad they moved it
and I'd be stoked to win again. "My wife put me on
a heavy diet and I think I've lost about 20 pounds
since the beginning of the year," he further added.
"I feel better and have more energy. I've been surfing
a lot, plus I moved back to Hawaii (from California,
to Kauai), and the waves have been insane. This morning,
the wave we were surfing is exactly the same as what
I have been surfing, just a little bigger.
Brazil's Padaratz, 29, who has
been absent from the WCT for the past three years,
stormed back into contention last year, taking out
the World Qualifying Series (WQS) world title. He
actually dominated the first half of the final, with
superior wave selection and committed surfing, but
was unlucky not to find the waves he needed in the
second half. A determined surfer, he's also undergone
a rigorous training regime to get to where he's at
now, and offered the following words in acceptance
of his first Bells' trophy. "All of my contests this
year I've had a sort of slow start, I think I was
too amped after last year's result," he began. "I
put such an emphasis on training last year and like
Sunny, lost a lot of weight and improved my surfboards
a lot. This year I had really good confidence on my
boards, but the results just hadn't come yet. I'm
pretty stoked to get my first one, and hopefully they
will keep on coming."
Equal third today went to Australia's
Taj Burrow and Nathan Webster. Burrow, 21, who finished
last year rated second and is again in that position
on the current ratings, looked to be Sunny's main
threat throughout the Rip Curl Pro. Up-against Padaratz
in the semi-finals, however, he made a few tactical
errors and failed to advance to the final. "I didn't
wear a watch, so I didn't know when the thing finished,"
stated Burrow after his defeat. "I think that's why
I blew it, I think I could have gotten the score I
needed really easy, but I didn't know how long was
left. I blew it by not bringing my watch down, so
that's what I'll blame it on (laughs). I had a lot
of better heats earlier in the contest, but that one
didn't go my way."
Webster, 26, who posted the
highest single wave score of the entire event today
in his quarter-final match against Brazil's Peterson
Rosa (a 9.6 ride out-of-a possible 10-points), was
still very happy despite losing to Garcia in their
semi-final. "I couldn't do a thing right," Webster
admitted after his loss. "I fell off a lot, my wave
selection was pretty poor, plus I ended up getting
caught inside. Pretty much did everything wrong in
my heat and Sunny was going crazy (laughs). It's a
good result for me though, so I'm pretty happy."
The World Championship Tour
now heads to Tahiti for the Bluetorch Pro (9-19th
of May), where surfers will meet for the third stop
on this year's season.
Courtesy of Tracks
Mag
