Brazil’s Filipe Toledo on Tuesday won the Oi Rio Pro for the fourth time, scoring a perfect 10 in the final against young compatriot Samuel Pupo to cement his spot at the top of the world championship tour ratings.
Toledo has made five of the eight man-on-man championship tour finals this year and never looked likely to miss out at the event he has commanded over the past few years.
His razor-sharp turns and unmatched ability to land progressive aerial maneuvers made him a favorite with the big home crowd, who roared in approval when he made a big full rotation air early in the final.
Photo: AFP
Brazilians dominated the men’s side of the contest at Saquarema, a beach town about 100km east of Rio de Janeiro, taking all four semi-final berths for the first time in a World Surf League Championship Tour event.
Hawaii’s reigning world and Olympic champion Carissa Moore also almost notched up a perfect wave against France’s Johanne Defay, leaving it until the last minute in their final.
Trailing on the scoreboard with the clock winding down, Moore took off and blasted two big backside turns on a solid overhead wave, scoring a 9.5 out of 10 to snatch the win.
“I think this has to be one of my favorite wins of my whole career, and one of the most meaningful,” the five-time world champion said. “Coming up against my really good friend Johanne Defay, I respect her so much, she got me at [the previous event in] G-Land, and I really feel like she’s the one to beat this year.”
The tour heads next to the long right-hand point break of Jeffreys Bay, South Africa, before the huge challenging barrels of Tahiti’s Teahupo’o for the final event of the regular season.
Moore and Toledo have now guaranteed one of five spots for the end-of-season, one-day finals event to be held at Lower Trestles in southern California in September.
Toledo lives just up the road, and was narrowly beaten by countryman Gabriel Medina at the final there last year, making him a favorite to win his first world title this year.
A runner who stopped during a marathon in China to pose doing the splits and another who hoarded energy gels have been banned for two years, the local athletics association said yesterday. The incidents happened during Sunday’s marathon in Sichuan Province’s Chengdu and were widely shared online. Videos showed a female runner stopping suddenly and dropping to the ground in the splits position, holding up her arms in a heart shape as she apparently posed for a photograph. She “committed obstructive fouls during the race, affecting the safe participation of other runners,” the Sichuan Athletics Association said in a statement, which identified
Liverpool star Mohamed Salah on Tuesday said that he would leave the English club at the end of the Premier League season, marking an earlier-than-planned departure for one of the club’s greatest-ever scorers and soccer’s biggest names. The 33-year-old Egypt forward, who has scored 255 goals in 435 appearances for Liverpool, “reached an agreement” to quit the team a year before his contract was due to expire, the Premier League champions said. Salah’s form has dipped in his ninth year at Anfield, to such an extent that he was dropped for a stretch of games late last year — leading to the
Mercedes’ Kimi Antonelli yesterday vowed to “keep raising the bar” after winning the Japanese Grand Prix to become the youngest driver in Formula One history to lead the championship standings. The 19-year-old Italian took advantage of a mid-race safety car to jump into the lead after a dreadful start from pole position, crossing the line ahead of McLaren’s Oscar Piastri and Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc. Antonelli’s Suzuka victory came two weeks after the first grand prix win of his career in China, and sent him top of the championship standings after three races, nine points ahead of team-mate George Russell. Mercedes are struggling to
There were some big games to be played yesterday in the NBA, with the Atlanta Hawks to play the Detroit Pistons in a matchup pitting a Hawks team who are rolling against a Pistons team trying to lock up the Eastern Conference’s No. 1 seed. The Oklahoma City Thunder were to play the Boston Celtics, a showdown featuring the two most recent champions, while the Houston Rockets faced the Minnesota Timberwolves, a game that could factor mightily into Western Conference seeding. Elsewhere, the Washington Wizards were to play the Utah Jazz, with the Wizards on a 16-game slide visiting against a team
RSS