Pipeline Masters Day 2 - photos
"I didn’t want to surf this morning. I was very, very clear I didn’t wanto to surf."
So said Kelly Slater after his come-from-behind win over Reef McIntosh in Round 2 of the Pipe Masters. Pipe was wild and unruly but the powers that be deemed it contestable and sent the surfers out. As Slater was objecting Jordy Smith whizzed by on the back of a medivac quad bike his shoulder hanging limply, the result of a vicious Backdoor slapdown.
Kelly continued: "It’s dangerous out there! It’s dangerous as shit. Pipe’s always dangerous but there’s days when it’s more dangerous. This morning there weren’t any waves getting made, and sets that looked good weren’t being caught by 30 guys who know what they’re doing out there."
Organisers ran through to the end of Round 2 before calling stumps due to the increasing swell and wind. Perversely, the wind backed off 30 minutes later and the best Pipe session of the season thus far went down without hooter or jersey.
Read a full report here.
All photo Matt Dunbar.
Nat Young easily accounted for Mitch Coleborn in their Rd 2 heat.
Kai Otton slipped by Simpo 7.16 to 6.83.
In the lowest scoring heat of the round Adrian Buchan on 3.47 points defeated the retiring Travis Logie who amassed just 1.30 points.
Wilko relegated Aritz Aranburu to the QS for 2015.
Glenn Hall was sent packing by Filipe Toledo who wafted into the trades.
With 17 points Slater easily scored the highest total of the round.
Slater exits the wave but remains in title contention.
Ever the crowd favourite.
At 2pm organisers called the contest off due to deteriorating conditions.
Just after 2:30 Wiggoly Dantas scooped into this barrel.
Owen Wright didn't let the opportunity pass.
Nor did John John Florence, picking off a number of great waves before dark.
Comments
Should have just put it on standby and run it later
this looks like fiji all over again... a missed opportunity of ASP to present their best content to the world and they called it off...
everyone could see it was going to pump again and with double up heats, they could have whipped thru everything pretty quickly...
Would have loved to see dusty Payne beat medina who would have tried to shoulder hop his way to victory, maybe that's why it on hold?
Cheers Matty Dunbar for the photos.
Easy to say Coops and in hindsight probably the right call to put on standby but conditions were terrible and the waves were a write off for the last two heats.
Only 2 waves in the excellent range, but I thought it was great viewing with the carnage. Loved it.
Yeah, I dunno if it can be compared to Fiji. The Volcom swell was a once-in-a-lifetime event, this was just slightly-better-than average Pipe, made less urgent cos there's plenty of swell in the waiting period.
It was 2pm, only two good waves were ridden all day. Hard to get upset at that.
Bit of a shame to cancel a heavy day at pipe when it would have really shown up who can charge big gnarly pipe for their world title. I heard the surf there got very good in the afternoon after the cancellation.
Bit of footage from the arvo:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dgwRWAyDk_Q
So not that good - hardly any toobs. Easy to say best sesh of the season when the season has only just started.
Yep I agree Mick, really enjoyed watching the worlds best surfers deal with very heavy, sketchy, scary conditions. In hindsight putting it on stand by would of been a great call but that's easy to say at the end of day.
Coops, if Medina has shoulder hopped his way into world title contention that doesn't say much for the rest of the top surfers &/or are you suggesting the whole thing is rigged?? Intersting.......
Sic contest so far.
Stu, you might want to check out the massive amount of viewers now.
Be sure to take into account and addy up all of the separate feeds on Youtube alone.... English, Portuguese, and Nihon.
Yeah Roller and good call, you're on fire
mick-free, that was the word from The Rock on that particular day, mate.
oh, and what part of MAY would you liked explained? ;-)
now, back to the numbers. those pesky numbers.
Rabits68 just throwing it out there see if I could get a bite, my little voice inside my head says no but stranger things in life have happened
Ahh Coops, is that all it was? If so, got me hook, line & sinker. However I reckon you truly believe it........
Have to say I agree with Coops. Medina is amazingly consistent and has surfed well all year but his heat strategy isn't particularly good for the progression of surfing or to watch - playing it safe whilst securing highish scores. Although he won chopes, he wasn't getting any major bombs and even let Kelly take one from underneath when he had priority. Alls kelly had to do was not fall off and he had it in the bag, same goes for Joel at the Gold Coast.
But that's whole point. It's a competition not free surfing. Those who can play the game the best deserve to win. I don't really care either way if Medina wins, good luck to him. Blame the system not the competitor.....
I have to agree with coops and carpetman. I think Gabby is amazing but he doesn't need it handed to him. I just thought that he got generous scores for both the snapper final and chopes given what parko and Kelly were doing in those respective finals. That would change the whole race. Good on Travis for having a go but surely there was a better way to honour him than have him paddle out lame and hardly take a wave. What about CJ? I would have loved to see Gabby take on J.O.B yesterday afternoon but I guess it won't happen.
Poo-man (& Coops & Carpetman), your argument would hold water if Medina was not only surfing his heats but also JUDGING them as well. How can the bloke (any surfer) be responsible for the scores he's getting apart from his side of the bargain (the surfing)? If you can't answer that then surely your argument is shot?!? Are you suggesting he's got some magical powers over the judges?? If your just taking the piss, so be it, but if not, offer a reason for your big call.......
I agree that medina seems to be getting way overscored (especially snapper 2014) and his heat "tactics" display poor sportsmanship he's cut from the same cloth as de Souza. I really hope dusty smokes him in round 3
Kelly Slater do you care to list Medinas "poor sportsmanship heat tactics" or are they just blatantly obvious??
Really don't get the medina hate... The Aussie cricket team have used the win at all cost attitude for a while and we applaud them! I also don't get the de Souza hate... While surfing pipe in January this year he and Paulo barcellos were 2 of the friendliest blokes out there... The only blokes that seemed out of place were the Middle Aged Aussie blokes who were clearly out of there depth and burning the chicks on lids on the outside
I think there has always been pushes, Mick, Joel Kelly in past years, helping hands on close decisions, this year has definitely been Medina's we saw this from the first comp with his final against Joel, for me its now more suss with ASP becoming more of a private business, which you would expect needs to start making money to succeed.
Ideally for Zosea Medina as world champ would be a dream situation with Brazil such passionate sports supporters and expect South America an important market (isn't that why we have the Rio comp) I read yesterday the Portuguese youtube stream hit record numbers for his heat.
Its also an interesting time with Kelly being the age he is and the crowd puller he is, when he retires it will be like losing the golden goose, I think if he does somehow win the world tittle he may retire on a win, while if he looses he has more chance of continuing, as he is a super competitive beast, ideally I'm sure Zosea would hope he continues, personally i think he has had some suss results that haven't gone in his favour.
Personally i hope Mick or Kelly wins, Mick cause he is Aussie and Kelly because I'm a huge fan, but If Medina wins he will still deserve it he has been super consistent, sure he has had a push, but so has Mick and Kelly in the past, so its all good.
In close heats it will go medinas way - South America = big money and more people watching medina next year to see him try to back it up. I'm not saying it's rigged but just slightly tilted his way or slaters in the day when the tour needed him. Medina will have to totally kook it not grab the title
"I'm not saying it's rigged but just slightly tilted his way or slaters in the day when the tour needed him."
Pretty sure you are saying it's rigged Coops.
http://m.
rabbits68 watch from about 27mins30secs onwards. Real top bloke that medina, sits miles down the line from durbidge with priority and waits for him to get one so he can drop in. Not only that he aims for him to try and get an interference.
Similar to de souzas tactics against Flores in a contest a while back.
KS that's no difference to what your namesake did to Parko at Kirra last year. I didn't like it but it's a competition and he had priority??
Yes it was similar, but there were two take off spots and parko kinda put himself in that situation. Slater had been sitting there the whole heat whether he had priority or not and parko chose to sit way deeper. It just seemed to me that what medina did was poor sportsmanship, once he lost priority he was all over burbidge like a rash again.
Stu you got me I concede
KS, if it's within the rules call it what you like but it's basically just competitors taking these rules to edge. It happens in all elite sport. I agree with the sentiment that at times being super competitive can look pretty ugly but I get back to the point that it's the system that creates this environment & the players are simply playing the game..
I would suggest that every WT holder has employed similar hard edged/competitive tactics to gain that edge.
yeah...and sports often create rules to penalize that sort of behaviour.
it nothing but poor sportsmanship to force an interference from so far down the line.
they have a rule in AFL that prevents a player from deliberately heading to the boundary because its been extensively used to deliberately waste time off the clock when your in the lead... in reality this is no different; medina by sitting so far down the line is deliberately wasting his opponents opportunities for next waves in the set. it is cheezy. playing defensive is a necessary strategy in every sport and medina had every opportunity to paddle out the back with Durbidge and take priority from there, but he chose not to and rather deliberately used the clock to destroy his opponents hope. they could easily make a rule that penalized this and I think they should.
Exactly the point I was trying to make, I just couldn't put it into words. Adriano caused the rules to be changed after he kept paddling to the inside at restaurants in a 3 man no priority heat...now 3 man heats have priority.
Maybe that one reason for that AFL rule but i think the main reason they brought it in was because when players were under pressure particularly in there back line (oppositions forward 50)and needed to get rid of the ball but there was no safe options or any options to kick it to a team mate, they would kick it up field to the boundry line where there was no player, one getting the ball out of dangerous space, two getting it closer to there own goals and three causing a throw in so 50/50 chance of getting the ball.
Many of the greatest sportsmen of all time have used unsportsmanlike like tactics to win a game/match/race/championship .
Football/Soccer - Maradonna, arguably the greatest soccer/football players of all time with the 'hand of god' goal to win the 1986 World Cup final
Formula 1 - Michael Schumacher, arguably the greatest race car drivers of all time crashing into Damon Hill to win the 1994 Formula 1 World Championship
Surfing - Kelly Slater, arguably the greatest surfer of all time with the high five to Rob Machado to win the 1995 ASP World Title
Here's a random idea I thought of to penalize doing that. If it happens with 4min on the clock then a minute is added to the heat. If 3min left on the clock then add 2min, if 2min left then add 3min and so on.
thats a good solution HappyasS, negates the benefit of doing so altogether huh
maybe doesnt totally negate the benefit. there would still be occassions where it was a no brainer (i.e. 30 seconds left and a ripper wave) and its the only cheezy tactic you can employ, but then at least that extra time to your opponent allows him/her opportunity to get another wave, and no hard feelings.
judging is all based around best performance (maneuouvers etc) on the best (usually biggest) wave...in fact even free-surfing is the same, sit as deep as you can and then extract every ounce of energy before the wave fizzles to an unworkable shoulder. but sitting down the line clearly well beyond the critical sections of the wave is completely at odds with this judging principle. there was no way that medina was going to get a big score off that wave even if he bothered to ride it through, so why favour his priority.
So how did he win at snapper sitting in at kiddies corner rather than from behind the rock like joel?
An underarm bowl if ever I saw one... Isn't it about charging it as hard as you can??