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The US Open of Surfing here in Huntington Beach was blessed with great surf conditions all week with Nathaniel Curran taking out France’s Tim Boal in a hard-fought final for the men and 14-year-old Malia Manuel defeating fellow Hawaiian youngster Coco Ho in the women’s.
For Malia this makes her the youngest person to ever win a major event with only Courtney Conologue being younger when she won a minor 1 Star event back in 2006.
Nathaniel’s win, the 2nd in his career, has shot him into the ratings lead on 10,350 points, over 1,100 points ahead of Patrick Guduaskas in 2nd spot.
In the Men’s ASP WQS, ratings the USA guys made some big jumps upwards while others ped to accomodate them, except for Chris Davidson from Australia who managed to move up from 7th to 4th.
The current ASP WQS Top 10 are Curran (4th-1st), Guduaskas (1st-2nd), followed by Weare (3rd steady), Davidson (7th- 4th), Bettero (3rd – 5th), Yeomans (9th – 6th), Simpson (15th – 7th), Garcia (8th steady), Courtney (6th – 9th) and Monteiro (5th – 10th).
Other big movers were Tim Boal 41st – 18th and Michel Bourez 28th – 17th.
For the huge crowd, the local surfers did exceptionally well with six of the final eight slots filled by Americans and two from Huntington Beach, being Chris Waring and Brett Simpson.
For Manuel it was her first ever ASP WQS event and she sits in 52nd spot while Coco Ho moved into 29th spot only having done three ASP WQS events this year.
Top of the ratings is still Sally Fitzgibbons on 9,695 points followed by Rosey Hodge, Paige Hareb, Bruna Schmitz and Jessi Miley-Dyer rounding out the Top 5.
Next week’s ASP WQS 6-Star event in Portugal should see some changes to the ratings for the girls with the Top 10 spots being very critical as there is only one more big event in Haleiwa at the end of the year for them to make it or break it.
In the ASP Pro Junior final, first to fourth were Tanner Gudauskas, Julian Wilson, Chris Salisbury and Nat Young in the boys with Coco Ho, Nikita Robb, Sage Erickson and Courtney Conologue coming first to fourth in the girls.
For both Tanner and Coco, it was their first ASP Pro Junior wins of the year.
In the longboards, Taylor Jensen came in 1st, Tony Silvagni 2nd, Ned Snow 3rd and Noah Shimabukura in 4th.
The only other event this week was in San Sebastian, Spain at the ASP Grade-1 Van’s Pro Junior where Marc Lacomare from France was the victor. This is Marc’s second win this year in an ASP Pro Junior event.
That’s it for now, but next week should see more chaos!