Rio Pro: Day 2
Sixteen heats run today in surf of similar size and quality as the opening day.
Super tricky, with occasional excellence, lots and lots of heats decided by single turn waves. Medina smoked by rookie Callum Robson. South American Wildcards went to the air and bundled out top seeds who looked to be showing signs of fatigue as we round the turn and head for the home straight in 2022.
There's your TL:DR if you are busy and/or don't care.
The Women’s Semi-Finalists were decided in surf that seemed to get weirder as the sun set behind the Church on the Hill over Barrinha.
For the life of me, I can't seem to see the World Title favourite amongst the front-runners this year. The incumbent Carissa Moore, looks hesitant on so many waves, unable to break out of a performance barrier that seems set to about 70%.
I guess that consistency and the Finals Day at Trestles maintains favouritism for Moore, but there's a brittleness to her performances this year - especially in Finals.
Steph was bundled out early by Izzy Nichols in a tight, scrappy heat that will not make a highlight reel for the year. Apart from El Salvador there hasn't been a single comp where Steph has looked like claiming the 8th Title.
Steph. Photp: WSL / Diz
Tyler Wright's Bells showing was easily the most dominant World Title-worthy performance but she's now missed too much action due to Covid and paperwork not being in order.
Maybe it's Defay? Lakey? Brisa?
My gut feeling is whoever comes out of Tahiti with the most confidence and momentum will storm the citadel. 0.0 heat totals are not unknown at Chopes and are always devastating to Title campaigns.
Some say I have been too harsh with commentary on Sally Fitzgibbon so I leave these pure stats here without comment.
Sally surfed twice, winning her opening heat with a total of 8.24. That put her into the Quarters, where she lost to Defay with a heat total of 8.10.
Those two sub ten point heat totals were enough to garner her (another) 5th place finish and $20K USD for seventy minutes work.
By contrast the winning NSW Womens State of Origin team played 80 minutes of full contact Rugby League last night for match fee payments of AUD $8800.
The Semi-Final match-ups for the gals seem fair enough: Johanne vs Gabby Bryan and Carissa vs Tatiana.
On form you'd say the Finals should be between Gabby and Tati. They've charged the hardest and made the most of chunky single turn sections.
You'd hate to have your career on the line in this stuff. Which makes me think of the perverse suggestion that the Tour should be slightly rejigged to have Brazil as the Cut-off comp. The stakes have decreased - not increased - since the cut for the back half of the Tour. There's a few guys punching the clock and collecting the checks. I'll throw Jordy Smith and Kolohe Andino as two names into the mix on that front.
Even Medina, the most competitive animal God ever set breath into (bar Kelly Slater 2002-2012) was in cruise control today. He paddled up the beach and left the chunky rights to Callum and had what looked like a perfunctory free-surf. Fell on a few airs, caught a bunch of nothing waves. There was no consequence. Gabe gets a fresh scorecard come January.
Imagine if there were consequences to this shifting, chunky beachbreak? If careers really did depend on sticking the Hail Marys the Brazilian wildcards continually launched today?
Very much more entertaining in my view.
Gabe. Photo: WSL / Smorigo
Not just Brazilian Wildcards. I thought Peruvian Olympian Miguel Tudela was a Pipe guy. Turns out he is a Pipe and Air guy. Two big hucks was enough to ignite the crowd and send Griff to South Africa early.
Mateus Herdy did the same to Final Five aspirant Kanoa Igarashi. Popping two on one wave for an 8.83. If you want to check one wave on the Analyser, go look at that one. That will give you the drift of what scored big in Brazil.
The other one to check is Caio's 10 pointer for a long, deep tube. A passable Back-door imitation on a day when most struggled to find a clean corner.
The most entertaining and consequential heat of the day was the Elimination Heat 5 between Chianca and Ewing. They traded turns, they traded tubes. There was more punch to the first vertical hit of Ewing, on a wave for wave basis and in the end judges made the call he was 0.1 point ahead of Chianca. It felt like a tactical error from Chianca. His Wildcard brethren sunk CT ships with aerial attacks and he stayed on the face, where Ewing had the advantage.
Ewing consolidates a dark horse run at Trestles with a huge hand to play at J-Bay. Those silky huge turns, powerboat rooster-tails, with no JJF as comparison, should stand alone.
Somehow, possibly because the discordant time zone has tweaked my sense of time and space, we still have 18 heats to run.
It seems like we should be closer to the finish, but here we are.
You'd think the comp ripe for the picking for a hungry Wildcard, likely against Filipe Toledo in the Finals.
Can you see it any different?
Comments
Wasn't Slater just as,if not more competitive,in the 90's than the 00's?
6 world titles and pretty much owning pro surfing mostly unchallenged during that time would indicate so i imagine.
Or is that an overlook error and from 02 instead of 92 typed?
And there goes Medina's slim chance of making the top 5,unless he wins the next 2 events and someone else's wheels fall off their top 5 campaign that they still haven't engraved their name on yet.
Sally Fitzgibbon's is basically getting a testimonial from the WSL for all her supremely positive interviews and attitude ... She is basically Erik Logan in female pro surfer form. Onya Sal.
Molly Picklum went to Chopes for practice... Olympic Gold and then some.
Jack Robinsonio... Brasil has made him.
Some might say Sally got the wildcard because Harvey Norman sponsored the Aussie leg of the tour and had a deal with Sally. When Sally failed to make the cut and that deal was worth very little , HN leaned on WSL for the wildcard.
Sally Fitzgibbon's is basically getting a testimonial from the WSL for all her supremely positive interviews and attitude ... She is basically Erik Logan in female pro surfer form. Onya Sal.
Molly Picklum went to Chopes for practice... Olympic Gold and then some.
Jack Robinsonio... Brasil has made him.
Caio made the most of that freaky little tube . Sniffed it and rode it to perfection.
Wildcards did really well. I watched Griff , Kanoa and Medina get taken out before I hit the hay.
I was expecting none of the above.
It's a strange tour this year when a tube ride at the brazil event is significantly better than any were at the G land event .
Something to note..For the best part of a decade, we've been told that Kanoa, kolohe and Jordy are all world title hopes. Theyve told us themselves.
I watched them closely yesterday because punchy right handers are their bread and butter. But when the big sections, the vital heat winning moments presented themselves to them, and they did..they all crumbled under pressure and fell/failed. Incidentally these 3 surfers display the least humility (outwardly) of all world tour men. Maybe some allowances for big jordy, hes more likely to still rise to the occasion, but the other two...when their moments come, they continually let them slip by. The hype however, is relenting.
Meanwhile Callum beats Medina, nearly wins bells yet no sponsor and talk of him winning a world title is...crickets. Baffling
Don't think it's been quite that long for Kanoa.
Jordy hands down,more like a dacade and a half now.
And Kolohe,well,is he even still a contender to win 1 CT event anymore lol.
“ For the best part of a decade, we've been told that Kanoa, kolohe and Jordy are all world title hopes.”
Add Julian and Owen to that list.
Just goes to show how hard it is to win one . Kolohe hasn’t even won an event has he?
I reckon those two fellas were a bit more humble about the whole thing though GF.
Dont reckon Chloe has won anything yet. Guaranteed after writing this he will though!
Kolohe Andino comes across as super humble to me. Since he was a toddler (pretty much) he's had Southern California hype smoke blown up his arse telling him he's the New Messiah. Doesn't seem to be getting to him personality wise.
Not my favourite surfer, but I do hope he wins an event before it's curtains,
Agree mate. I think he seems to have matured a lot, fatherhood will do that. Seems like he knows what’s important. Would be really good to see him win a CT. To me he’s that Bede Durbidge level and he won one.
Well Julian did get close once in 2018,
Although he would have needed Medina to bomb out early at Pipe,which of course didn't come anywhere near happening.
Him and Owen were expected to take the baton from Mick and Parko and bring more titles home to Oz but seems they dropped it on the handover and never caught up to Brazzo team running away from them.
Robbo is now showing the best signs of success coming our way again for the first time since Mick's last title.
If not this year,it should definitely be coming sooner rather than later.
Jordy and Kolohe are everything and nothing but average for WSL. Jordy maybe hanging in for a last hoooraaaah at JBay? Sally is the love child of Eric L conceived after a dramatic exit around a Bell. The cut off, ability to fade in and out of the tour (Kelly I will recoup in Indo), Sally why not Molly, oh my god I could just keep going… Wake me up for JBay then rest me until Pipe. The black hole of what will happen next, combined with some mind surfing is the real excitement. Amongst the dross of WSL decision making Phil, Callum, Ethan et al, pure inspiration.
I've been thinking the same with Jordy, win Jbay and retire. He's guaranteed a 2023 place but not to make it to Jbay (they may give him the event wildcard). Will be interesting to see how long he hangs on for.
Hey don't give up on Jordy yet.
He's not old at 34.
Not compared to Slater,who even as recently as a couple of years ago still had some trippers thinking he could win another world title in his late 40's,(WSL hype scripters included),despite overall very ordinary competitive results for a bunch of years running.
But then again,Jordy only has about 10% of Kelly's career success by the same age.
In that case then yeah,he is too old and done by now so might as well retire.
He's gone from the youngest guy on tour heavily hyped for imminent world titles,to the oldest guy (kelly aside),and looking more and more every year like he's watching the ship from the shore that he should of been a passenger on,disappearing into the horizon.
Watched 5 mins of the womens .....4mins and 55 secs i wont get back........and then watched Caios barrel which was awesome, can't believe he made that.........but this event is far from the best surfers in the best waves Dream tour as the WSL puts it......... the cut off isn't working unless the waves are firing as its boring as bat do da.....i found the manly comp more entertaining and Nias is way better viewing........
Say your not going to comment on Sally then say she got paid too much compared to rugby players?
Does that mean the men were paid too much too?
Suggest you go and rewatch that comp from years back in Fiji when she was charging with a taped up head.
The girl deserves respect.
Those were the days hey.
Back when she was a consistant world title contender.
Here's hoping she becomes one again,and earns a lot more money than she does these days!
I’m not even watching comps anymore. I just read these summaries to see what happened, much easier and faster.
Same. Then YouTube the highlights.
Steve I understand your reluctance to accept Sals place here, but for the sake of context no one in the woman’s quarters had a double figure heat total, not just Sal.