Tags: WCT

Steve Sherman’s pho­tos of the Mundaka (more like Sopelana) WCT event. There’s a feel­ing of “behind the scenes” in these I like a lot.

ASP WCT sce­nar­ios going into the penul­ti­mate stop of the tour (Peniche)

If Mick Fan­ning were to win the upcom­ing Rip Curl Pro Search Portugal:

Joel Parkin­son (AUS), 28, would need a 9^th or bet­ter and Adri­ano de Souza (BRA), 22, would need a 3^rd or bet­ter to pre­vent him from clinch­ing the 2009 ASP World Title in Portugal.

If Mick Fan­ning fin­ishes Runner-​​Up at the upcom­ing Rip Curl Pro Search Portugal:

Joel Parkin­son (AUS), 28, would need a 17^th or bet­ter, Adri­ano de Souza (BRA), 22, a 5^th or bet­ter, Kelly Slater (USA), 37, and Bede Dur­bidge (AUS), 26, a win to pre­vent him from clinch­ing the 2009 ASP World Title in Portugal.

If Mick Fan­ning (AUS), 28, fin­ishes 3^rd at the upcom­ing Rip Curl Pro Search Portugal:

Joel Parkin­son (AUS), 28, would need a 33^rd, Adri­ano de Souza (BRA), 22, a 9^th, Kelly Slater (USA), 37, and Bede Dur­bidge (AUS), 26, will need a Runner-​​Up fin­ish, and C.J. Hob­good (USA), 30, and Taj Bur­row (AUS), 31, will need to win to pre­vent Fan­ning from clinch­ing the 2009 ASP World Title in Portugal.

(via)

Given that a 10^th title is noth­ing but a math­e­mat­i­cal shot for Kelly (not that it looks he’s even car­ing), I’m root­ing for Joel. Mick’s surfs like a aer­o­bics class, Bede just surfs plain ugly (and has been aver­age at the most all year) and the rest is plain unlikely. But, as the author states, sil­lier things have happened.

Watch­ing Tiago Pires surf against Mick Fan­ning in R2, a cyn­i­cal viewer might have got­ten the impres­sion that the judges decided the out­come of this heat before it began. Match-​​ups like this are like a col­or­ing book: the out­line and shape of the result is there on the page for every­one to see, includ­ing the judges. All the surfers have to do is catch a cou­ple set waves that hint at inher­ent respec­tive tal­ents – hand the judges the right color crayons. They’ll fill in the expected pic­ture from there. So for Tiago to win heats against world champs, he was to do more than make it close. He has to dec­i­mate Fan­ning. Tiago caught the big­ger waves, com­mit­ted to his gouges, and scored per­haps the hol­low­est bar­rel of the event. And like fel­low Euro Tim Boal, he lost anyway.

Lewis Samuels is a caus­tic, loud­mouth, “hey-​​look-​​at-​​me!” kind of surf writer. But here he is noth­ing but right.