The three Maldivian surfers in the Men’s Open category of the Asian Surfing Championship have been eliminated after surfing the heats in the third round.

The round three sessions kicked off early Friday morning at the Mahabs point break, where 32 surfers competed for a quarterfinal spot.

Maldivian surfer Ismail Rasheed (Smiley) took on the second heat of the day. Having been able to catch just two waves, Smiley scored 3.44 points. He needed over eight more points to qualify; the heat winner, Mega Artana from Indonesia, managed to score 12.5 points.

Smiley had qualified for round three after scoring an impressive 9.4 points in yesterday’s heat in round two – he had caught four waves yesterday, scoring 4.83 and 4.87 in the third and fourth waves.

Just as Ismail Rasheed, his Maldivian counterpart Hood Ahmed (Hoobs) took on day three on the back of a heat-winning session of 10.17 points in yesterday’s round two. Competing in the fourth heat of round three this morning, Hood Ahmed scored 8.83 points, combining his second (3.83) and third (5.00) waves. His opponent, Shidong Wu from China, scored 14.50 points, stealing the quarterfinal spot. Hoobs ended the heat in third place, behind Wu and Dhany Widianto (11.34) from Indonesia.

Ahmed Agil, who had scored the highest in his heat in round one, was also eliminated from round three this morning. Ammadey competed in heat six, and surfed four waves. His best results came from the first two; 4.50 and 4.43. Despite scoring a combined 8.93 points, Ammadey could not qualify for the quarters. His Filipino opponent, Eduardo Alciso, qualified by grabbing the top spot with 10.54 points, followed by Liu Chen from China with 9.00 points.

“This is not the end. We’ll come back stronger” stated Ahmed Agil on social media, following the heartbreak of this morning’s results.

The 4th Asian surfing championship saw a total 47 athletes compete in the Men’s Open Category. All three Maldivians have performed exceptionally well in the first two rounds. Going into round three, Maldives men’s team had a joint-highest score of 2,590 team-points, tying with five other nations.