Riptide Magazine

Kingy and Chad knocked on the third day at Arica

Who better to give you an update about the third day of the Arica Chilean Challenge than the man that's arguably Australia's brightest World Champion hope for 2009, Mr Ryan Hardy:

Regarding Mitch's situation.

The last we heard was that Hughesy (Brad Hughes - Ed.) was travelling with Mitch over here and that Mitch was in crazy pain on flight to LA, urinating blood and stuff. So it was a pretty serious problem with his kidney. A doctor advised him to go back home and as far as we know he´s in Sydney getting treated.

More injuries.

And the local hospital here has been busy to with local incidents too. The most notable incident was David Phillips had to get his appendix removed! He's still in hospital now with further treatment necessary after about five days in there already the poor dude. While Hubby (Jeff Hubbard - Ed.) was in there visiting he said there were a handful of other competitors of various nationalities with stomach bugs and infections from urchins and reef cuts, nasty!

Waves.

The waves have been pretty similar for each of the three days of the contest; 3-5ft glassy and pretty inconsistent, but with sick sets, barrels and ramps.

The comp.

Today, as the rounds got closer to the main event, the waves were again inconsistent and so the hassling really begun. Plenty of interferences went down as guys scrapped over splitting left and right peaks for the chance to advance to the main event.  Chaddy Jackson was unlucky to get an interference in the dieing minutes of his heat as he was snaked at the last second on the wave he needed to advance through the heat.  Kingy  (Damian King - Ed.) also had a tight heat, but missed out in the last 30 seconds after getting a 6.85, when he needed a 7.2. Novy (Michael Novy - Ed.) and Rigby (Tom Rigby - Ed.) both surfed well and consistently to advance to the main event. They're saying that the will possibly be held tomorrow as a new big swell is expected to roll in over the next few days. The stage is set for some solid waves heading into the final days of competition. It should be sick!

That's all from Ariiiiica at the moment.

See ya  - Hackballs

We've got some more photos of day three of the Challenge for you in the Riptide Exclusive Gallery, thanks to photog Chris Garden.

The interweb home of the Arica  Chilean Challenge has provided the video of the third day below. The site also provides you with a brief summation of the day's news and the results of each heat.

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