The La Santa Surf Pro 6 Star Prime WQS event started today in wind blown 3 ft waves in San Juan, the famous lefthander offering average but still contestable conditions. Being the third of five 6 Star PRIME events on the World Qualifying Series, the La Santa Surf Pro is a crucial stop regarding both European Pro Surf Tour and Internationl ratings and round 1 surfers opened the event with a strong will to qualify and get a chance to surf against the best.

Seventeen heats were ran today, officials calling the event off after heat 8 of round 2 in order to see how the expected push in the swell shows up tomorrow. Asked about the week’s forecast, contest director Jesus Aguayo (CNY) answered.

“We will not be lucky as last year this week but we are confident in bringing the event to its end in good surf. It might get us mobile to the near beachbreak or even to the west coast of the island but we’ll get the best waves possible for the best surfers in the world.”

“For the first time ever Lanzarote hosts one of the biggest events in the world and we are ready to to give all these surfers some good conditions. We’ll be here first thing tomorrow at 8 AM to keep going and finish round 2 at least,” finished contest director Jesus Aguayo.

Late entry in the event, foster’s ASP World Tour member Cory Lopez (USA) qualified today for round 2 getting away from a tricky heat in style with a solid 14.83 pts heat score thanx to the best wave of the day, an 8.83 out of possible 10. Surfing against three canarian surfers, Lopez easily qualified and will surf tomorrow against Jay Quinn (NZL) and David Richards (ZAF) to try and join brother Shea in round 3.

Best scorer of the day, Cory Lopez (USA) came straight after the Billabong Pro Mundaka and hasn’t surfed a WQS event since the US OPEN of Surfing in Huntington last July.

Sole moroccan of the event, Abdel El Harim (MAR) found the right waves to advance to the best seeded surfers’ round, posting an average two wave combined total of 11.16 points ahead of canarian junior Manuel Lezcano (CNY). El Harim missed the first half of the year after a knee injury that kept him out of the water for seven months, and is now looking to secure afew points for next year’s WQS seedings.

Having an up and down year so far, 2006 European Pro Surf Tour #6 Gony Zubizareta (ESP) managed to qualify despite the average conditions, the spanish surfer scoring a low 8.97 total to reach round 3 where he will meet current WQS top surfer Kieren Perrow (AUS) and 2006 Asp Europe junior champion Joan Duru (FRA).

The outgoing tide made it event tougher for this first day of competition, giving all surfers a hard time to find some good potential rides in the decreasing, sometimes closing out, waves.  European top junior Vincent Duvignac (FRA) was another qualifier getting through two rounds to secure a spot in heat 8 of round 3.

Posting a 14.03 pts heat total despite a slow start in the last heat of the day, former European Pro Surf Tour champion Justin Mujica (PRT) was a stand out getting the third best result of day 1 behind experienced WQS campaigner Frederique Robin (REU) and Lopez.

It wasn’t an easy day to surf for our competitors. The contest will restart tomorrow Wednesday, October 17th at 8 AM (GMT+1), heat 9 of round 2 first in the water.