2019 #KiwiWSL: Rough Start, Bali Nek

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Aotearoa's Paige Hareb and Ricardo Christie are battling away in the World Surf League and after two events in Australia, WSL now moves to Bali, Indonesia this weekend. Neither Hareb or Christie have made their way deep into the latter stages of their respective tournaments and while they both have generic placings of 17th in their two tournaments, there are minor differences between the two.

Christie has enjoyed a slightly stronger start to the tour, accumulating 2,660 points over the two tournaments so far. This has Christie ranked 23rd coming into Bali, with a bunch of lads on 2,660 points (two lots of 1,330 points from the two tournies) which is a level above the basement group.

On the women's side, Hareb is in the basement group with her 2,090 points. Hareb is one of two surfers who have been in both events on 2,090 points, while the other have missed these tournaments via injury. For context, USA's Caroline Marks leads the women's tour with 16,085 points and John John Florence from Hawaii leads the men's draw with the same points.

Lakey Peterson, Nikki Van Dijk, and Paige Hareb battle in Round One, Heat 1 at the 2019 Rip Curl Pro Bells Beach W. #WSL Watch the full heat at http://www.worldsurfleague.com/watch Subscribe to the WSL for more action: https://goo.gl/VllRuj Watch all the latest surfing action of the world's best surfers in the world's best waves.

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Owen Wright takes on Ricardo Christie in Round of 32, Heat 11 at the 2019 Rip Curl Pro Bells Beach. #WSL Watch the full heat at http://www.worldsurfleague.com/watch Subscribe to the WSL for more action: https://goo.gl/VllRuj Watch all the latest surfing action of the world's best surfers in the world's best waves.

That basically means that the kiwis are struggling, but Bali now presents what should be a familiar environment to the kiwi surfers. I'll pop up next week depending on when the Corona Bali Protected event gets underway to see how Hareb and Christie are sliding through the early stages of the competition.

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