Australian surfer Owen Wright has scored some serious tube time to rocket into the quarter-finals of the Tahiti Pro.
The world No.11 upstaged tour-leader Filipe Toledo and Japanese young gun Kanoa Igarashi to top their fourth-round heat at Teahupo'o's world-class lefthand reef break on Friday.
Wright impressed in glassy 1-1.5m groundswell with a 6.67-point barrel before sticking a huge flair turn to score 6.00 on his second wave.
The 28-year-old booked a final-eight showdown with countryman Wade Carmichael after the world no.6 finished second in his heat.
Connor O'Leary fell agonisingly short of making it an Aussie trifecta as Brazilian no.4 Italo Ferreira landed two late aerials to relegate him to third.
The Australian pair is joined in the quarter-finals by Brazilian trio Toledo, Ferreira and Gabriel Medina, Frenchman Jeremy Flores, American Kolohe Andino and South African outsider Michael February.
In earlier third-round action, Wright threaded an eight-point barrel to knock out retiring world champion Joel Parkinson 14.27 to 10.83 in his final Tahiti Pro appearance.
"Conditions are a bit of a letdown," Parkinson told the World Surf League website.
"There was literally three waves in that heat. I got one and then Owen had the other two. That's the way it goes on these slow days out here."
The 2012 world champion managed to find a tube on his first wave for a score of 6.40 to grab an early lead.
But that was undone by the NSW surfer's precision barrel on his fifth wave, with the Queenslander unable to find a better score as the clock ran down to zero.
Parkinson, who has announced he will retire at season's end, was runner-up in Tahiti in 2012 when he won the world title and grabbed third place there in 2007 and 2008.
"It's over out here for me," he said.
"I am going to miss holding priority for the last 10 minutes, hoping for a score."
Fellow Australians Mikey Wright and Ace Buchan also fell out of contention with third-round defeats.
The 37-year-old Parkinson now has four rounds left in his professional career.
His last event will be the 2018 Pipemasters in Hawaii, the same event where he narrowly won the world title in 2012.
