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Sep 8 (Reuters) – Stephanie Gilmore of Australia took the field to claim a record eighth world title by defeating American five-time world champion Carissa Moore in the final in Southern California on Thursday.
Stylish Gilmore, who honed his surfing on pointbreaks off Australia’s Gold Coast, faced the worst at the venue of the Lower Trestles, Southern California’s premier cobblestone pointbreak.
Gilmore, 34, struggled through a series of one-on-one matches for his best-of-three title chance, beating Brisa Hennessy from Costa Rica, Brazil’s Tatiana Weston-Webb and France’s Johann Defoe .
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“I don’t have much left to be honest,” said an emotional Gilmore. “I imagined it a lot, I was like ‘Let’s do it, I have a chance'”.
Moore, the top seed after a 10-stop world tour, advanced straight to the final, but the 2021 world champion and surfing’s first Olympic gold medalist struggled to find the waves to bring her powerful turns.
The win confirmed Gilmore as the most successful female professional surfer of all time, breaking her tie with countryman Layne Beachley, who won seven world titles in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
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Reporting by Lincoln Feast in Sydney, Editing by Ed Osmond
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