Watch: The Four Best Heats of 2016!

Five hundred heats boiled down to four!

Eleven events on tour means five-hundred plus heats. And that means, periodically, and usually when you step outside or you’re busy manoeuvring sun-lamps around your sick bed, there are a handful of heats that are the apex of enormous effort. Moments that dare take us to a utopia where boredom is annihilated, conservatism scrapped.

Oh, I know. Those early rounds feel like the same surfers painting the same mountain over and over again. Little virtuosity, just crude brushstrokes exhibiting all the subtlety of a Jackson Pollock canvas.

But nice to celebrate the best, yes?

Earlier today, Ross Williams, Martin Potter and Joe Turpel released a short on the best heats of 2016, which you can watch here.

There are four heats analysed: Medina and John John’s semi at Teahupoo, John John, Stu K and Filipe’s round four in France, Taj’s farewell heat in Fiji against John John and Gabriel’s world title castration against Tanner Gudauskas, Trestles.

I could watch Filipe’s ten in France until the repetition drove me mad.

And I still find it difficult to believe Tanner Gudauskas’ three hunched snaps outscored Gabriel Medina’s seven ripostes.

Favourite heat?

Gotta be Taj and John in France.

Watch heats here!