Sublime Stairmand Too Good For Opponents, Rosa Career Best!

A move to Ruapuke Beach south of Raglan was not enough to stop local Raglan surfer Billy Stairmand from claiming the Rip Curl Pro presented by Nature Valley today (Saturday 12th March).

It’s the third time Billy has won the Rip Curl Pro, both previous victories (2008, 2009) were made at Manu Bay. Billy won convincingly in the 1-2ft waves at Ruapuke Beach.

The conditions could not be further from what is expected when Billy takes his place in the Rip Curl Padang Cup in Bali later this year - an invitation he receives as a result of his victory today along with the $3000 cash prize "It will be amazing to go to that event and surf Padang Padang with four guys out. It is not going to be one foot and onshore though is it. It will be good that Morehu (Roberts) will be there too, I’ll have a friend to hang with."

Billy surfed a near perfect final today scoring 18.25 points out of a possible 20 - the highest heat score of the entire event. His top two waves were 9.5 and 8.75 point rides, his highest comprising of two backhand re-entries and a trademark fins free backhand close out bash that brought the sun drenched crowd to life. "I just went out and got that first wave and it flowed from there. I was relaxed and not thinking of the heats as a comp, just having fun with the boys kinda thing" said Stairmand.

Comparing his three wins post-final, he thought the win today on the beach break was "pretty amazing." It is good to have it here, different waves etc, it makes it fairer in some ways" added Stairmand in reference to the options a beach break provides.

Billy is one of New Zealand's big hopes on the WQS along with Travel partners Richard Christie and Jay Quinn. Having won a 6 Star WQS event in Portugal in 2010, this win will be the perfect platform leading into his 2011 WQS campaign.

Auckland's Rosa Thompson surfed to second place and a career best result in the Open Womens division. Thompson did hold the lead for part of the final after scoring a 7.0 point ride early in the heat. However after hunting down a 4.5 point ride for the latter half of the final, Thompson came up short with a 3.8 point ride on her last wave to come agonisingly close to a win.