Very impressive, considering he only competed in two events, and didn't manage to win either…
The 2015/2016 Big Wave World Tour is in the books, and Greg Long is el campeón !
Very impressive, considering he only competed in two events, and didn’t manage to win either. But the problem with the BWWT, you can talk shit all day about the events, but you can’t really hate on the competitors.
Greg Long is a top tier charger, no doubt. He’s no Shane Dorian, but who is? And Mr Dorian didn’t even break the top five, what a kook!
Now that all’s said and done it’s time to look back and nitpick. So much fun.
WSL evil empire aside, there are a ton of people behind the scenes working really hard to make shit go, and now we can tell them they suck. It was all wasted effort.
‘Cuz it’s kind of funny, despite the fact that this year has been chock full of huge swell, only three events went. Yes, Pe’ahi was glorious, but Todos was terrible. And it took me a while to remember the third contest. It’s mentioned, in passing, in today’s WSL press release:
While three events were ran during the 2015/2016 WSL Big Wave Tour, Long competed in only two – the Pe’ahi Challenge in Maui and the Todos Santos Challenge in Mexico – where his Finals’ berths garnered him enough points to best one of the most competitive fields in history.
But it took me a good ten minutes of googling to remember it was Chile. Remember? The “secret” contest, where the WSL claimed there was no infrastructure to support a webcast, then shut down the local team that proved them wrong?
Ever gracious, Mr Long’s statement is a treat.
“The 2015/2016 winter season has been one for the record books,” Long said. “There’s been record-breaking waves, more big swells, bigger barrels – basically every single level of performance in big wave surfing has just been shattered this year. For me, it is always an honor to be a part of that. It is a tremendous feeling being crowned the 2015/2016 WSL Big Wave World Tour Champion.”
All true, though the wast majority of those amazing occurrences took place outside of a heat. Because a big wave tour is still a stupid idea, and impossible to run, even during a year with an inordinate number of SSBBW type swells.
Let’s take a gander at the year end leader board, with bonus info featuring how much each guy won. I had to figure it out myself, because the WSL is very loud when it’s time to hype a comp, but very quiet when it’s time to dole out some bread.
Prizemoney varies based on swell size, so I had to kind of guess at what each guy won. Not too hard, I’m assuming Todos and Chile paid the lowest amount possible, Pe’ahi paid the most.
1. Greg Long: $18000 (Didn’t CJ Hobgood win the title in 2001 without any first place finishes? Or am I thinking of someone else?)
2. Makua Rothman: $15500 (Makua surfed in all three events, which means two big travel expenditures getting from his home rock to South America. And last minute inter-island flights aren’t exactly cheap either. Hawaiian Airlines has been using its monopoly to gouge the fuck out of Hawaii residents this year.)
3. Billy Kemper: $25000 (In my mind the real winner this year. That’s a nice chunk of change for a contest within driving distance of your home.)
4. Nic Lamb: $7000 (Lamb competed in all three events, which means he had to eat the cost of traveling from NorCal to Chile, then Mexico, then Hawaii. That’s brutal.)
5. Josh Kerr: $13500 (Kerr skipped Pe’ahi, and $13.5k ain’t a hell of a lot of money. Enough to ruin a life, but not enough to really improve one. But he earns real dough from this surf gig, so he’s the only guy on the list who probably doesn’t feel hammered so bad.)
I wonder what the future will bring.
Will the WSL realize the BWWT is a flop and can it, or sell it to the highest bidder?
Or does this model work for them? It’s a pretty sweet deal when they get to promo a possible swell, get everyone sharing and talking, knock that brand exposure out of the park. Then shut it down it last minute, no need to pay out.
The Eddie does much the same for Quik. Each year there’s no end of speculation, the term “Eddie swell” gets tossed about each time the buoys start to go nuts, but they’ve only had to fork out some cash slightly less than a third of the time.
Nobody should be paid for jerking off on camera either, but such is modern life.
Haha. Best reply for months.
and cocaine. surely some went on cocaine. it seems a shame to not shoot some wad on cocaine. i mean, i would.
dion agius gets it right. the money is in black, beards, sunnglasses and bunny hops on the wave. winning formula!
I wonder if his dad got mad at him for winning the WSL World Title last year.
Big wave surfing is like wingsuit base jumping. It’s impressive, it’s brave and the public are generally wowed by it, but it’s hard to monetize. Why? Because it’s hard to develop it into a format where you have continuous viewership. It works great as a 20 second YouTube clip but beyond that it gets shallow.
It’s funny because exactly the same things are said in base jumping, “these guys are risking their lives, blah blah, and they get paid nothing, blah blah, millions of people think its cool, dangerous, impressive, blah blah, they should be getting paid way more than pro golfers.” If you think big wave surfers get paid peanuts, you should look into wingsuit base jumping. Last I checked, according to injuries and fatalities, wingsuit base jumping is more dangerous than surfing big waves.
Ah yes! But wing suit base jumping, aside from its utter incomprehensible stupidity, is fucking dislocated. It has nothing to do with anything anyone else ever does. Big wave riding is a natural extension of small wave riding. Which according to the International Surfing Association, is being done by 24 million people worldwide right now! Surely a market can be found!!!
that’s a big fucking surfing ‘family’, hey ISA?
Oh, by the way, wing suit jumping is not stupid. it is a total rush. and the minutiae calculated within an inch of life. pretty bloody impressive. nevertheless, that doesn’t mean they deserve money. money is for action sport heroes like Laird!
Nay, it’s fucken stupid. It’s as pointless as surfing and it almost inevitably results in death, which might be fun for all the other wingsuiters who can talk about how “he died doing what he loved” and “man it’s better than getting leukaemia” and so forth, but I bet it is not fun for the parents.
Would Nic Lamb have been able to cover his excess baggage fees with that massive $7K prize money. Must cost a bomb to pack a quiver of 10+ footers all the way to Chile. Kinda sad really
His Mom’s American Express Centurion covers all of his expenses.
I don’t understand why they don’t do the big wave title based on Video entries that then get judged by a panel based on a set criteria. So many good waves get ridden all year it seems stupid and is a touch embarrassing that the world champ gets decided in the current format.
The XXL Awards cover that end. The logistics are just too insane to continue in the format of a World Tour and anybody to really get excited about a title race. Would anyone really want to play Big Wave Tour Fantasy Surfer? It is great as a spectacle and I hope it continues as such.
W\hat a complete load of shit that tour is – not only are the athletes paid nothing, but it must be running at massive massive loss. Each one of those guys would have lost coin going to events. Fuck that