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In this week’s WQS events local surfers grabbed both first places with South Africa’s David Weare taking out the 6 Star Prime Quiksilver Pro in Durban and Frenchman Romain Laulhe the Vendee Surf Pro in France.
The win for Weare makes it his 4th career WQS victory but this is for sure the highlight of his career winning a 6 Star Prime and 3000 points pushing him from 164th to 12th on the WQS ratings.
For Romain it is his 1st WQS win so for sure he is also extremely happy plus has 1500 points to add to his ratings tally putting him up from 92nd to 44th.
Second place getters USA’s Austin Ware (Quiksilver Pro) has moved from 30th to 4th and Australia’s Luke Campbell (Vendee Pro) jumped from 127th to 72nd.
The Top 5 on the WQS ratings still has Patrick Gauskas in first spot on 5944 points with Brazilian’s Hizunome Bettero 2nd on 5475 swapping with last week’s second place Raoni Montero on 5200. Rounding out the Top 5 are in 4th Austin Ware (USA) and 5th Leigh Sedley (Aus).
In the WQS its very important to keep a high average per event so the final points tally for the best 7 events is as high as possible so it’s important to note though that both Hizunome and Raoni have only done three events each while Patrick has done six so actually Hizunome is the solid ratings leader with an average of 1825 per event compared to Patrick’s 991.
A minimum of 1000 points per event is needed and others although down the ratings list with high point averages are the ones to watch as they will jump dramatically as they fill up their best seven results with good places. Some of these to watch are David Weare averaging 1988, Josh Kerr 1800, Yadin Nicol 1650, Adriano de Souza 1575 and Chris Ward 1575.
On the ratings other big movers than those already talked about are Leigh Sedley 18th to 5th, Shaun Gossman 12th to 6th, Shaun Cansdell 34th to 11th and Drew Courtney 49th to 17th.
No women’s events this week and just the one Oakley Pro Junior in Durban where Klee Strachan was victorious.
This week’s event is in Scotland, the O’Neill Highland Open, another 6 Star Prime event so expect some big cold water waves and plenty of points available.