Two Attached Photos: Thomas Woods (AUS/Gold Coast) – the 17 year-old is standing out at the Billabong Pro Junior Asia – he was the second highest top scoring surfer in round two today, surfing superbly at the famous Keramas River mouth and winning through to round three — Four Gold Coast surfers are through to round three – Thomas, his brother James and Jack Freestone (Coolangatta) and Mitch Crews (Currumbin) who is the events number one seed. Billabong Pro Junior Asia is a gathering of many of the world’s top 20 year and under ASP surfers – Duel sanctioned with ASP Japan and Australasia…..9 countries are represented here – Australia, Indonesia, Japan, Sth Africa, Jamaica, Hawaii, New Zealand, Sudan, Sth Africa. Full Press from day 2 below….
Thomas Woods quotes – “It’s one of my favourite waves in the world here at Keramas…it just seems to suit my style and I like it across all tides and conditions…hopefully it stays good for the weekend finals!” full press below….
Billabong Pro Junior Asia
Keramas Bali Indonesia
Association of Surfing Professionals Grade 5 Pro Junior
$30 000
July 21 to July 28 2010
Billabong Pro Junior Asia round 2 sees no wind and Keramas River-mouth clean and firing
Beyrick De Vries top scores inspired by Jordy Smith!
Keramas Bali Indonesia Friday July 23 2010, Immediate release: Ideal offshore clean surf greeted competitors surfing the Association of Surfing Professionals Billabong Pro Junior Asia at Keramas River-mouth and all 16 round two heats were completed in the well shaped 1.25m (3 to 4 feet) surf.
Second round seeds from Indonesia, Australia and Japan were introduced in this unique duel sanctioned event and there were plenty high scoring performances.
Highlight surfers today were international pair Guimarãres Yan (Brazil) and Beyrick De Vries (South Africa).
Both are highly rated surfers from their respective ASP Pro Junior circuits in their home countries and both saw the opportunity to surf outstanding waves in Bali and compete against many of the world’s top Pro Junior surfers.
“It’s a great event for me to mix it with the international surfers” said Brazil’s Yan who lives in Rio.
“There’s unbelievable surf everywhere here and to surf with just three others at Keramas is amazing.”
Durban’s 17 year-old De Vries is presently number four on the ratings in South Africa and he put on a Jordy Smith inspired performance posting the day’s top scoring single ride of a 9.1 along with the highest heat tally of the day of 16.75..
“Jordy is our man in surfing and we all look up to him so I suppose his win in J’Bay and the fact he is now number one in the world has us all lifting our surfing and proud to be South African ” said De Vries.
“The waves here are high performance, it’s my favourite wave in the world and I just love the place – it’s paradise” added De Vries.
Of the local Indonesian surfers, many surfed superbly with Putu Anggara (Nusa-Lombogon) and Gazali Hamzah (Sumbawa) the stand-outs by both winning through to round three.
Anggara is a stylish goofy foot surfer and looked in full control carving a series of well-executed back-hand bottom turns to win his heat defeating Australia’s Oscar Scanes.
Japanese and Australian surfers were also prominent today lead by Matt Banting (AUS), Chris Salisbury (AUS) and Thomas Woods (AUS) along with Japanese pair Yasui Takumi and Kurokoshi Taiki who were both impressive.
Thomas Woods (Gold Coast/Australia) put on a particularly strong heat late in the day, with his fast and super fluent yet powerful style coping with ease on the shallow lower tide.
Tomorrow sees round three heats in action and the very top seeds from Australia, Japan and Indonesia entering the field and with the quality of the surfers who have advanced today it is certain to be an outstanding round with increasing swells forecast.
