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July 19 (Reuters) - Brazil's world champion Filipe Toledo surfed with speed and style to win his third Corona Open J-Bay in South Africa on Wednesday, qualifying for the Paris 2024 Olympics and the end of season, one day world tour finale in California along the way.
American Lakey Peterson took out the women's event with a hard fought win over Australia's Molly Picklum to give herself a shot at making the top five who will battle for a world title in September.
Waves at the world's best right-hand point break were at times inconsistent and significantly smaller than the double overhead walls seen in earlier rounds on Tuesday.
Toledo's semi-final opponent, Japan's Kanoa Igarashi, started with an excellent 8 out of 10 but then waited more than half an hour in vain for a second decent scoring wave.
Conditions improved for the women's final, with Peterson and Picklum trading waves and the lead until the American secured the win with a series of big turns for an 8.5 late in the contest.
"It just feels amazing, I can't believe it. It's been a real up and down year. It just feels so good," Peterson said after her first win of 2023, which took her to sixth in the rankings. "Everyone worked so hard, the level is just so high now and it's so hard to win."
Throughout the event, Toledo proved why he is regarded as the fastest surfer in the world, stringing together searing carves and regularly punching his fins out as the waves raced down the rocky point.
His 9.93 out of 10 in the final against defending event champion Ethan Ewing from Australia was the highest of the event and he backed it up with a 8.83.
The win cements Toledo's position at the top of the 2023 world tour rankings and provisionally qualifies him for the Olympics.
The top 10 men and top eight women at the end of the 10-stop world tour will take 18 of 48 spots available for the Olympic contest, to be held in the heaving tubes of Teahupo'o in Tahiti next year.
Ewing, Itay's Leonardo Fioravante and American Griffin Colapinto joined Toledo, as well as Brazil's Weston-Webb, France's Johanne Defay, Brisa Hennessy from Costa Rica and Portugal's Teresa Bonvalot in qualifying from the world tour.
Former world champion Italo Ferreira suffered a knee injury in a nasty looking wipeout on Tuesday, a potential setback in his bid to make the WCT Final Five and the Brazil team to defend his Olympic gold medal from Tokyo.
