GERROA'S Sally Fitzgibbons wound up her Olympic Games preparation with an equal-third place finish at the Surf Ranch Pro on Sunday.
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After qualifying for the semi-finals of the sixth stop on the World Surf League Championship Tour in third spot, Fitzgibbons took on France's Johanne Defay, Hawaii's Carissa Moore and Brazil's Tatiana Weston-Webb for a spot in the decider.
In the semi-finals, the Kiama High School alumna could only muster a right-handed score of 7.50 and left of 7.83 - for a two-wave combined score of 15.33.
This saw her place fourth behind Defay (16.07), Moore (15.90) and Weston-Webb (15.77), to finish the event in equal third - while the top-two progressed to the decider.
In the final, Defay's 16.63 was enough to claim the crown over Moore (16.23).
The latter extends her lead on top of the world rankings with this result, with Fitzgibbons still second.
While Fitzgibbons' Olympic Games teammate Owen Wright, from Culburra Beach, just missed out on a spot on the men's semi-finals, by finishing the qualifying rounds in 10th position.
Brazil's Filipe Toledo took out the men's competition by defeating countrymen Gabriel Medina 17.94 to 10.60 in the final.
Owen's younger brother Mikey finished the event in 34th position, while sister Tyler withdrew from the event, to concentrate on her health and wellbeing, earlier in the week.
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