There has been a double does of heartbreak for the Australian team at Tahiti’s Teahupo’o, with two surfers’ Olympic dream coming to a shattering end.
Ethan Ewing and Tyler Wright have both been bundled out of the competition, with Ewing losing his dog-eat-dog battle with fellow Aussie Jack Robinson.
Wright also lost her quarter-final clash with US world champion Caroline Marks.
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There were devastating scenes for Wright with her chance to land a winning wave never materialising with a scoring set disaappearing before her eyes when it broke further out to sea.
Robinson will now have two chances to win an Olympic medal after putting on a mighty show with the highest-scoring contest of the day.
He emerged victorious 15.33 to 13.00 and could now follow Owen Wright (Tyler’s brother), the sole Australian to medal in Olympic surfing.
Improved weather in Tahiti, hosting the Olympic surfing, allowed surfers to return to the waves on Friday (AEST) after two-and-a-half lay days.
Robinson set the early running against his Queensland opponent, piecing together a combination ride with several turns to score 7.33.
Ewing shot back at the half-way point with the heat’s best run, scoring 8.33 with a long ride through a barrel.
The Western Australian responded with a barrel run of his own, carving through and punching the air after landing the all-important second scoring ride of 8.00 with eight minutes left.
The fickle Teahupo’o break didn’t offer Ewing an opportunity to respond as the minutes ticked down, leaving him a few points short.
Robinson’s victory sets up a semi-final against legend Gabriel Medina, with the winner to surf for gold, and the loser offered a shot at bronze.
Medina — the three-time World Surf League (WSL) champion captured in one of the photographs of the Olympics earlier in the meet — progressed by defeating Joao Chianca.
The other men’s semi-final is between Peru’s Alonso Correa and Tahitian Kauli Vaast, representing France.
Wright, as a Round 1 winner, spent three days on the sidelines but was in action twice on Friday, first in her third-round heat against Israel’s Anat Lelior.
With the heat evenly poised, Wright triumphed by holding her nerve at the back of the surf in the final minutes, scoring 5.27 in a late ride to progress 11.10 to 7.74.
Unfortunately, the French Polynesian swell didn’t offer Wright a similar opportunity against Marks.
In a low-scoring encounter, Wright needed a score of just 4.28 to jump the American who had worked hard on small waves to stay ahead.
With a minute left on the clock, Wright saw the set she’d been waiting for break further than she anticipated, and Marks triumphed 7.77 to 5.37.
Wright revealed she carried minor injuries into her quarter-final after a run-in with the shallow reef chasing waves against Lelior.
“The hand’s scraped, the leg’s scraped, I’ll have a big old bruise on my hip,” she said.
Amid the on-water action, another Australian was sanctioned for an off-water transgression, judge Ben Lowe.
Lowe was stood down by the International Surfing Association (ISA) after being pictured with Ewing and his coach Ben Durbidge.
“It is inappropriate for a judge to be interacting in this manner with an athlete and their team,” an ISA statement read.
The ISA removed Lowe – an experienced WSL judge – from the panel for the rest of the event for breaching the ISA’s code of conduct and the International Olympic Committee’s code of ethics.
– With AAP