The Brazilian storm leader Filipe Toledo won the Oi Rio Pro last Friday at Praia da Barrinha after defeating 2018 CT Rookie Aussie Wade Carmichael in the final, in front of a beach packed with thousands of fans.
Connor O’Leary came straight home and surfed in the Elouera Boardriders Club contest on Saturday.
His tour is now on the line as he once again just missed a spot in the third round by less than half a point, finishing 25th.
Ranked 30th on the leaderboard but still surfing strong, hopefully the Corona Bali Pro, men's CT stop No.5 at Keramas, Bali, Indonesia will really kick start his year.
A positive part of this stop on the tour for O’Leary is that the Margaret River Pro, which was canceled last month after nearby shark activity in the Western Australia region, will now be completed at the world-class wave of Uluwatu at the conclusion of this year's Corona Bali Pro.
The event will take place within 48 hours after the contest at Keramas and finish no later than June 13. O’Leary is still alive in that event and the long powerful lefts should suit him.
Competing back at his home beach on the weekend, O’Leary linked his waves to the beach and had enough contest savvy and big moves to see off his clubmates winning the final over Harrison Martin, Joey Sear and Reiss Hunt.
It's the best season for surfers in Cronulla right now with offshore winds and consistent South swell pouring into the Bate Bay beaches.
The weekend saw pumping solid waves and Monday and Tuesday also had their moments with smaller but clean conditions all day.
I took todays pics at Nth Cronulla today and Wanda on the weekend where a good left suck has formed and its doing its thing-I also shot the EBC contest on the next bank.
Swellnet predicts this diet of South swell to continue with a large to very large long period S'ly groundswell with generally light winds predicted for today (Wednesday).
At first light the swell had arrived with good clean offshores and looks to stick around for the week.
“Wednesday morning is looking at an almighty pulse of powerful long period southerly swell that’ll light up south swell magnets with very big surf in excess of 6-8ft+”
Thursday will see a rapid drop in size from Wednesday, and than Friday will see another swell front coming through from a powerful Southern Ocean low-all this this with light and variable winds- happy days.
At least we got an Aussie up when Stephanie Gilmore won the Oi Rio Women’s Pro,Six-time WSL Champion Gilmore battled through four rounds on the final day, taking down Lakey Peterson (USA) in the Final, Nikki Van Dijk (AUS) in the Semifinals, Sally Fitzgibbons (AUS)in the Quarterfinals, and Caroline Marks (USA) in Round 3. Not only does Gilmore’s win mark her 28th CT victory but also her first CT win in Brazil.
In Japan QS competition got underway yesterday at the Ichinomiya Chiba Open Men’s Qualifying Series 6,000 event and all potential qualifiers are there.
This event is the third WSL QS6,000 event of the season and will have massive ramifications on the 2018 CT qualification race, Cronulla’s Jared Hickel won his first round heat but got hammered in round 2 and Shane Campbell went out early in round 1.