How will you feel when Finals Day at eight-foot Cloubreak becomes a relic of times past?
The trumpets and clarions rent the air with triumphant blasts yesterday morn, their golden notes proclaiming the return of Pipeline as the world surf tour’s climax.
Revolutionary!
As it was for the most of the previous fifty-ish years of pro surfing until its flim-flam frontman Erik Logan decided to gift two consecutive titles to a Brazilian small-wave specialist by having the crown decided in two-foot southern Californian waves.
Also, elimination rounds gone, mid-year cut gone.
Now, here’s the thing.
Erik Logan, for all his crimes, got it mostly right.
The mid-year cut and a Grand final brutal in its guillotining of dreams were two ways of creating a tension in a sport where very happens until after a couple of weeks of driving in circles the quarter-finalists are decided.
The elimination round was a bone throne to pro surfing treasures who felt it unfair to travel around the world only to be eliminated after thirty minutes, unaware that sports exist for the spectator and not the athletes. A foolish move in a game with too many athletes competing for airtime.
Finals Day was the best happen to pro surfing since Rab got his freckled hands on the levers and turned a city beach break tour into the Dream Tour. It was a model of what a surf contest could be and it’s what Natural Selection tried to replicate except with B-grade surfers and a wave impossible to photograph, and failed.
Watch Italo, Ethan, Jordy, Jackie and Yago and Caity, Molly and co duke it out at eight-foot Cloudbreak this September and tell me it won’t be a day you’ll ice work, ice a cheap vodka, crush some modern bennies imitation and slip into the folds of your couch for a peak surfing experience.
How will you feel when that disappears?
More importantly, should any administrative move that promises disappointment to some of its participants be banned in the interests of inclusiveness?
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Lost behind the wall.
They need to abolish heats and introduce full-contact, no rules, mixed gender competition. 60 surfers paddle out and hassle each other for 8 hours until a winner is decided.
Royal Barrique tube riding contest in Hossegor is kind of run like this. Everyone out at the same time, best barrel wins etc. In last year’s event some of those competing ended up fighting each other, rather unsurprisingly….
-there is a kind of cut for the last two events — 36 to 24 for men, 24 to 16 for women — so still some drama as to who gets in there
-may not come down to Pipe every year, but the system does weight towards Pipe by giving it significant additional points compared to other contests (1.5x – query whether it should be 2x), also only top 9 of 12 results will count, thus attempting to ensure that anyone in striking distance going into Pipe has a shot at winning
-Pipe much better venue than Fiji even when both are on, the backdoor option a big plus factor (in surfing as in life)
-Fiji doesn’t always pump either, doesn’t matter where you are, the risk of flatness is real
Cue in Mick Fanning and Joel Parkinson
No one watches the men, even less watch the gals.
Wouldn’t say I sit through too many gals heats, but none of the back thirty men either.
I’d actually love that.
1. Losing the non elimination round is a good idea because there was no point, no tension.
2. Finishing at Pipe rather than Trestles is obviously a good idea. Cloudbreak is equal to Pipe.
3. Eliminating the midyear cut is a bad idea because it created tension and made the early events matter.
4. Final 5 vs. Cumulative points? Kinda depends on if a surfer has run away with the title. Pottz had the ’89 title easily, imagine if there was a Final 5 then and someone stole it. Final 5 had the bonus of creating tension to get to the Final 5. Did Carissa deserve to lose a title? Probably not.
The elimination round did mix up the seeding. Butttt that’s about all it did.
Was a Slater idea from memory.
That’s the way I remember it. I think it was from the days where they changed from a top 44 to top 34 and they and to work out some way to trim the field into 32 so that the seeding would still work.
It would have been better to just make it a top 30 (plus 2x wildcards).
Yeah it sucks to be the local wildcard who would always get dawn against the #1 seed but that’s life and in some events (like pipe) it could be a local pipe specialist who you really don’t want to be up against.
Corporate sponsors… Ladders, esky/coolers and Soy Milk… Parental Guidance World Tour.
Ronnie Blakey and his muppet brother screaming at me that the manoeuvre in 2 foot slop is “unbelievable”
Easy on the muppet bro talk. Vaughan a king!
Ha no drama… HG Nelson’s bastard child then
Vanilla monday……..been reading /looking at boards at Bells did an interview at Stab on ..stuff??…, and have come to the conclusion that we just can’t blame the WSL and it’s product…..have an indisputable World Champion in womens and mens….
Vanilla is word used a lot which is sorta a version of mediocrity dressed up as , for example the WSL Tour….but I think it applies to the surfers/shapers/media ……it’s not just the WSL but the media/industry that have sought to sanitize things/products, so now surf culture is very Vanilla.
because of the demographics on BG we all have memories stories/life experiences of a much wilder /creative /innovative surf culture that was shunned by mainstream commercial surf Co’s….and sanitized the surfing culture as there was shitloads of money to be made.
So we now live in a Vanilla Surfing Culture, with a few remaining remnants from the good old days….carry on as usual BGers!
haha—sanitized is a good adjective—but maybe sterilized would be more fitting.
Surfing has been so sanitized, sterilized, groomed for the mainstream consumption it’s not even funny.
Seems the only saving grace is—it doesn’t seem to be working.
It’s just being pulled along by Dirk Ziff and his billions.
Natasha Ziff must still be in the driver seat with her hots for pro surfers.
Dirk probably doesn’t even give it a second thought anymore, out of sight out of mind.
Just has his accountant write out a check to the Wsl each month—and takes advantage of the loss as a tax write off…..
We need a little of that Brutus hot sauce. Big man sass.
Vanilla is an essential ingredient for many deserts, but usually as a background to chunkier, more robust presences like chocolate chips, etc.
There’s a metaphor in there somewhere.
Vanilla sex is also pretty good, compared to, like… no sex. When rare the opportunity comes to add chocolate sauce on top then we all just get lucky.
“surf culture.” There’s the rub.
Hopefully the “market” corrects itself… everything is cyclical
Derek’s too young to remember the tour climax in 1988 when Barton came from behind to beat Tom Carroll, who had catastrophically dropped in on Todd Holland. That’s more exciting than a final 5.
In an ideal world it would be a Hawaiian triple crown so the top surfers have to do well in all kinds of heavy conditions (like it used to be), or a surfer who wasn’t very good would have to step up or get overrun.
There’s too much emphasis on pipe over other heavy waves (like sunset) and if you look at the einners list theres been a lot of fairly average pros win it (if you can call a pro “average”).
The WSL can’t work out what its purpose is. Crown a legitimate world champion, or provide content for the sponsors and broadcasters. Why give pipe more points, why “uncut” the tour for one arbitrary event? May as well go back to events having different value if the sponsors want to pay more.
Kudos to them for at least getting their shit together.
An uncut tour? Filthy!
Who you going to “dock” with otherwise though?
Uncut is the best
Too little, too late??
ha ha—the only thing that’s keeping this farce alive right now—is Dirk Ziff’s billions…..
I didn’t mention the airs. Just equality of pay.
But yeah the women’s air game in comps is fucking shithouse, but so is a good chunk of the men’s.
The NBA Dunks! The WNBA just wants equal pay….
If a surfer finishes at the top of the rankings they are the overall WSL season winner.
Keep the cut in its orginal format,get rid of the safe surf tour lifers.
Cut the women’s prize money to reflect the numbers of actual competitors or increase the mens prize pool.
Drop the world champion moniker as its no longer as highly valued as the Olympics gold medallists.
The final event should simply be that the final event held at the birthplace of professional surfing
wild cards can only be for the top CS surfers this will drive them to higher performance levels.
Stop trying to merge professional surfing with Polynesian Culture , professional surfing has no right to appropriate or adjacent its self with spiritual surfing.
The tension in surfing should be in ocean not manufactured by administrators.
WSL cursed with average conditions and the dermination to package it for TV.
Curses itself with having to mow through fifty or whatever it is competitors in a ten-day window.
Dang, check out the CJI, million dollar purses to the winners of each div! One day event. Laughs, silliness, highest-level performances.
I find difficult to understand the excitement over shifting back to Pipe as a final event after a year of the usual drudgery.
There is still cloudbreak, there is still a cut, and pipe at 8 ft is as good as cb for the final, with 50% more points at pipe anyone who made the cut could steal the title just like final 5, the only thing they cant control is huey, so again wsl has ticked all the boxes here so stop your whining.
I feel really good finals day has fucked off, as I don’t care if the event was successful, it was fucked, and if less people watch , well good, now we can have a real world champ again and the people that are bored in between sets , well they can go watch the tennis tour,
ELO’s fingerprints are all over the gun that put professional surfing to sleep! Can this new CEO raise the dead – I doubt it but at least he is trying!