Thulusdhoo (Maldives), Aug 22 (IANS): Kishore Kumar advanced to the final eight stage in the U-18 category at the Asian Surfing Championships while Harish Muthu was left disappointed by his third-place finish in the men's open category quarterfinals.

The competition which is a qualifier for the Asian Games 2026 is being held at Thulusdhoo in Maldives had eight Indians in the fray across four categories.

Indian child prodigy, Kishore booked his quarterfinal spot in the U-18 category by achieving a score of 14.33, the highest by any surfer in Round 3. He scored a two waves score of 6.83 and 7.5 to finish on top of Heat 2 of Round 3, which is also the highest score of all the Indian surfers in the championship so far. Kishore will be up against Chinese Taipie’s John Chan and Sayyid Salahudheen of Maldives in Heat 3 of the quarterfinals which is scheduled on Friday.

Harish, who hails from Tamil Nadu had to face a stiff challenge in the quarterfinals from Joi Satriawan of Indonesia and Kaisei Adachi of Japan who finished first and second respectively. Harish finished third in the quarterfinals with a score of 6.76. Earlier, he finished second in Heat 1 of Round 3 with a score of 8.43 with two best scores of 5.33 and 3.10 in four waves to qualify for the quarterfinals.

Speaking on his achievement, Harish said, “I am proud of my performance in the Championships even though I couldn’t make it into the semis. This was a great experience for me to compete amongst the top-ranked Asian surfers and I have learned a lot from this competition.”