Surfing: Kauli Vaast (FRA) will surf for gold
Team France’s Kauli Vaast has advanced to the finals. He will surf later today for a gold medal.
With a rising swell offering both tubes and some open-faces for turns, Vaast (FRA), who grew up surfing Teahupo’o, flexed his local knoweldge in heat #1 of the Men’s semi-finals against Peru’s Alonso Correa and used a strong combo of tube time and gouging, top turns to punch his ticket to the finals
Vaast’s best wave, a 5.83, came after pulling into a crisp, clean tube direct from takeoff, exiting, cutting back to the pocket and then slamming it off the close-out section, blowing his fins out of the back of the wave. He backed it up with a 5.13 courtesy of the heat’s longest tube, albeit with a slighlty messy exit. His total heat score was a winning 10.96. You could hear the crowd in the channel errupting with cheers as the horn blasted signifying the end of the heat.
For his part, Correa (PER) kept it close until the very end, taking off on a wave in the final seconds that gave him a chance to pull out the win. The goofy foot managed to find a few barrels- including the biggest, cleanest one of the heat- and one particularly sylish layback snap but never found the consistency nor high perforamnce turns neccesary to match Vaast (FRA). He finished with a best wave score of 5.67 and a total heat score of 9.60.