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LEMOORE, California/USA Winners
LEMOORE, California/USA Winners
LEMOORE, California/USA and Carissa Moore (HAW) and Gabriel Medina (BRA) have won the women's and men's titles at inaugural Surf Ranch Pro presented by Hurley, Stop No. 8 on the World Surf League (WSL) Championship Tour (CT).
South Africa's Jordy Smith of Durban and Michael February of Cape Town, finished ninth and 25th respectively in the first CT event to be staged in artificial waves in nearly a quarter of a century.
Smith narrowly missed out on the eight-man final group after finishing in seventh position in Friday's qualifying session. But Smith was overtaken by three surfers in Saturday's action and was one of four surfers allocated equal ninth place prize-money and ranking points.
The captain of the Rest of World team that in May won the Founders Cup preliminary event at the Kelly Slater Wave Systems facility 160 kms inland from the California coastline, Smith moved up one position to 6th on the Jeep Leaderboard heading into the final three stops on the 2018 tour.
February started his campaign for a spot in the top 8 in the event on Thursday, but top scores of 5.0 for his best left-breaking wave and 6.1 for his best right left the 2018 rookie grouped among the 12 surfers who exited the event in equal 25th position overall.
Sunday's victory is the first of the season for Moore and her first on the CT since the Roxy Pro France last year. The win sees the three-time WSL Champion take home 10,000 points and move up one place to World No. 4 on the Jeep Leaderboard with two events remaining in the women's Championship Tour season.