Final Lay Day Called, Event Will Recommence Tomorrow in Building Surf - News - Billabong Pro Tahiti 2012
The Billabong Pro Tahiti has called its eighth and final lay day this morning and will recommence competition tomorrow.
Event No. 5 of 10 on the 2012 ASP World Championship Tour, the Billabong Pro Tahiti completed the opening two rounds of competition in the opening two days of the waiting period and will complete the remainder of the event in the final two days of the competitive window.
“As expected, the swell has yet to fill in this morning and we’ve called competition off for the day,” Rich Porta, ASP International Head Judge, said. “We anticipate a modest swell to fill in the afternoon and build throughout the night and into tomorrow while a stronger secondary swell begins hitting tomorrow afternoon and sets up a good finish
One of the Code Red bombs from last year
This year’s event has been pushed to the final 2 days of the waiting period with 2 full days of heats that need to be run in order to complete the contest. As is often the case with Mother Nature, Teahupoo has not been kind to the event this year, remaining flat for almost the entire waiting period. It will be interesting to see how things go tomorrow, as the real swell will only start showing late in the day. If they had 1 more day available to them in the waiting period, they probably would put the event on hold until late tomorrow afternoon, since the best part of the swell will be Monday through Tuesday. At any rate, we’ll see what faces Fred Patacchia (Haw) and Mick Fanning (Aus) in their Round 3 matchup, the first heat scheduled to be run when the contest resumes tomorrow morning. They will have to start early tomorrow unless they reshuffle the draw and hold three man elimination heats to condense things. That scenario is not likely to happen, so hopefully they will be greeted with some decent surf at sunrise. Look for steadily improving surf and building size through the day Sunday with potentially heavy surf (10-15’ faces) for the Final on Monday. The event will finish in what looks to be fully pumping Teahupoo. We will soon see how accurately the forecast pans out. Not to be missed!