Having built their advantage through the respective gold and silver medal-winning performances of Pauline Ado and Johanne Defay earlier this week, France is now the last team with all its surfers remaining in the men’s competition.

Among those in action today were Joan Duru against Germany’s Leon Glatzer and Jeremy Flores against Brazil’s Raoni Monteiro.

Duru got the better of Glatzer in heat 91, rounding off his first-place score of 14.84 points with a smooth air reverse.

Monteiro saved his best two waves for last on his way to registering 14.83 and surpassing Flores’ 13.83 for first place.  

Both surfers will advance through to round three.

"That heat felt like I was already in the final," Monteiro said.

"Jeremy Flores is a great surfer - we’ve competed a ton of times on the WSL (World Surf League) Championship Tour.

"I am so stoked that I was invited to compete for Team Brazil after an unfortunate last-minute injury to Wiggolly Dantas.

"My team supporting me on the beach helped a lot - they told me to go to the right side of the beach where I found my best waves."

France would have suffered their first elimination had it not been for the last-gasp heroics of Vincent Duvignac.

Duvignac found himself in third place in the dying seconds of heat 87, but he managed to post the highest wave score of 8.7 points to move up to first with 14.6.

He eliminated Germany’s Lenni Jensen and helped keep his country atop the team standings.

In the final heat of round two, the reigning and two-time ISA world champion Leandro Usuna of Argentina was defeated by South Africa’s Shane Sykes and Spain’s Luis Diaz.

With Usuna bowing out of the competition, the only previous gold medallist still in contention is Flores, who triumphed at the 2009 ISA World Surfing Games on Playa Hermosa in Costa Rica.  

Portugal were the stand-out performers in the opening heats of round three before an extreme high tide caused the action to be put on hold.

Pedro Henrique scored the round’s highest heat score thus far with 14.43, followed closely behind by team-mate Guilherme Fonseca’s 14.00.

France had another close call in the afternoon as Dimitri Ouvre tied with Chile’s Nicolas Vargas’ heat total of 8.87.

Ouvre’s higher single wave score of 5.50 earned him second place and left Vargas in third, eliminating him from the competition.